Nope, it’s a culture problem. Everywhere were stuff is being made, you get what I call the proverbial twelve year old. These are emotional immature people who are unable to emphatically imagine that there is a person on the other side donating his time to create something that is useful.

They don’t see their own toxicity. If they see the roadmap and their desired feature X isn’t there, there will just be screaming about that.

I would see it as addressing the very narrow issue of accidentally "rewarding bad behavior". You can more convincingly tell people that their pet feature shipping right after their tirade had nothing to do with them. I feel like that would help me as a maintainer, if nothing else...

At which point you ask for a substantial sum of money to prioritise their feature (and hopefully they go away).

This is actually not a bad idea. There are already so many sponsor project like github sponsors, brave tips etc. Something like patreon can be used to solve this. You buy into a higher tier and that gives you 1 feature request.

Edit: Or something like kickstarter, if enough people pledge for the issue it gets priority on roadmap.

Edit: I looked up if software is being developed on patreon and... so much NSFW stuff.

one would think Signal can hire bunch of devs full time with 50M donation to avoid such lame excuses

Apply here: https://signal.org/workworkwork/

I was thinking the same. Doesn't even have to be a roadmap, even merely opening an issue for a feature long in advance, saying "comments about x go here, as we intend to implement it at some point in the future".

Those kind of issues, while useful for well-behaved people, are often magnets for the kinds of people who yell "look! People have been asking for this for 201X, why are you ignoring your users!"

The tone might be off but it seems like a perfectly valid question.

If most users have wanted X for years but the developer instead spent her energy implementing Y and Z that noone else cares about, that begs questions like how are features prioritized ("based on what I want to work on" is a valid answer but needs to be explicit) and who the software is for ("me but sure you guys can tag along and use it for free I guess" is a valid answer but needs to be explicit)

Maybe some of those users who have wanted feature X for years would be happy to pool some cash to make it happen if given the opportunity.

> is a valid answer but needs to be explicit

Honestly, it doesn't even need to be explicit, they just need to not be actively implying otherwise. (Eg, like gnome/gtk from the sibling thread.)

We do exactly that with our customers. Here is our roadmap but if you must have feature x you can pay us to prioritise it and get it sooner. It’s a great way to filter wants from needs.

Yes it's the decent thing to do.

Building a tool that works juuuuust enough for people to set it up and start relying on it, and then never ever fixing the most salient and impactful bugs because "people aren't entitled anything after all" is just wrong.

It would be much more honest to state up front that said tool should not be relied on for any use beyond one's hobby, that it will not be supported, and that the whole package is just "up there" for anyone interested, without any guarantee. And no, having that written in the default LICENSE file is not sufficient.

Well, it's sometimes valid criticism. Have you ever checked out the gtk file picker ticket from 2004?

If you ever wonder why GNOME devs seem so hardnosed on issue trackers, just read comments by people demanding that they implement things users have been wanting for years :)

Well, when instead of fixing decades old bugs they decide to instead remove features people used because they don't want to maintain them and add features nobody asked for because they were fun to work on, what do you expect people to say?

1. Nothing, because the maintainers have the last say because it's their time and they don't owe anyone anything

2. "Aight I step up to maintain the feature"

I seriously don't understand the expectant attitude of some users. You get what you pay for.

I don't see GNOME devs going around asking people to use it? And you can do what you want on a piece of software and still have it be a "serious tool". I don't see a contradiction.

Would it be okay to explain why other issues have taken priority and will likely take priority for the near future?

It doesn't hurt to write down the thought process. Of course some people can't be appeased and no reasonable explanation will be sufficient.

I cant help but laugh, since this is very likely the kind of things he fields, but is also totally natural for techies to suggest.

I meant it more as a solution to people thinking their bad behaviour is being validated.