1. Just because a thing exists, does not give you the absolute moral right to criticize it, especially in a way that is toxic for the person or persons that created it.
Criticism affects both the people criticized and the community/universe at large, and not always in positive, productive ways.
2. Just because a thing is free, does not grant the thing or its creator absolute immunity from criticism.
Things that exist have an impact on communities or the universe in general, and people are going to be affected. And not always in positive, productive ways.
1 and 2 can both be true, and I think they are both true.
There is a judgment call involved as to when criticism is unfounded, unproductive, a distraction, and/or outright toxic, just as there is a judgement call involved as to when a thing’s existence in its current form is a net negative.
You are not wrong about user entitlement being a problem, as noted by #1, and you are not wrong in a commercial sense about maintainers not owing any one person anything.
But as per #2, I do not believe that is an absolute blanket injunction to never have an opinion about their choices or about the net positive or negative effect of the existence of the thing they maintain in its current form.
Critiquing someone's actions and choices is a founding principle of open source software, politics, and in general most human culture. "I think it was wrong to delete the GitHub issue because my belief structure XYZ" is acceptable.
Critiquing someone personally based on their technical choices is not acceptable. Reddit allows it, and thus Reddit is unusable as a social platform for positive outcomes. "I think you are a bad person because you deleted a GitHub issue" is NOT OKAY.
That distinction appears to be what led the creator to quit today, because the GitHub issue they deleted (perhaps incorrectly) contained personal attacks that linked their technical choices to their quality of human self (definitely incorrectly). I personally would have chosen to XYZ and I think they'll do so in the future if that comes up in a GitHub issue again — but focusing on that is incorrect here.
The focus needs to be on those who wield personal attacks on others over technical choices, and on rewriting communities to prohibit and evict these participants in all cases where such can be done. Shun them, ban them, and prohibit them.
I agree with your point. Personal criticism should be extremely rare, and very carefully handled. A thread in a public forum is almost never the right place for it.
1. Just because a thing exists, does not give you the absolute moral right to criticize it, especially in a way that is toxic for the person or persons that created it.
Criticism affects both the people criticized and the community/universe at large, and not always in positive, productive ways.
2. Just because a thing is free, does not grant the thing or its creator absolute immunity from criticism.
Things that exist have an impact on communities or the universe in general, and people are going to be affected. And not always in positive, productive ways.
1 and 2 can both be true, and I think they are both true.
There is a judgment call involved as to when criticism is unfounded, unproductive, a distraction, and/or outright toxic, just as there is a judgement call involved as to when a thing’s existence in its current form is a net negative.
You are not wrong about user entitlement being a problem, as noted by #1, and you are not wrong in a commercial sense about maintainers not owing any one person anything.
But as per #2, I do not believe that is an absolute blanket injunction to never have an opinion about their choices or about the net positive or negative effect of the existence of the thing they maintain in its current form.