In my case, I received most of the entitled requests via email to the address that I had used for the git commits. It's exhausting having your inbox flooded. But I agree. Delete + ignore is the right reaction in most cases.
That said, I feel that the balance in open source has shifted from fellow developer users to companies leeching off your stuff to power their SaaS.
So these days, I prefer offering a rate limited free API instead of local tools and / or source code. That also conveniently keeps non technical users away.
> In my case, I received most of the entitled requests via email to the address that I had used for the git commits
Same here. To avoid getting overwhelmed by this, I have setup a particular email address tied to my git commits, that gets re-sent to my main email address, where it gets filtered, marked as seen and tagged as "potentially spam". I look at this tag sometimes (maybe once a month), depending on my available time, but in most cases, I just receive automated spam that is not even worth opening.
Yeah, I was talking about Git in general, not specifically GitHub. I'm contributing to a few projects that are not on GitHub, and my solution works everywhere, not just on GitHub.
What about the developers that insist on using Github ? It's out of the question for me to create an account there, and Github doesn't allow anonymous posts. So email is often the only way to reach them.
You're choosing to not use the system they use to run the project.
If that means you can't communicate with them then that is your problem, not theirs.
For projects that want to cast the widest net, they should arguably engage with community (broadly) wherever they are/want to be. For small projects/individuals? It can absolutely make sense to insist on a specific workflow that reduces their work.
That said, I feel that the balance in open source has shifted from fellow developer users to companies leeching off your stuff to power their SaaS.
So these days, I prefer offering a rate limited free API instead of local tools and / or source code. That also conveniently keeps non technical users away.