The dev's response on Github was unhelpful. The original comment just asked for a target date for the next release. Why didn't he just tell them? And if he didn't have a release scheduled (which I believe is the case here) then he should have just said so. Instead, he gave zero context and just asked for money. I agree that the person from the original post sent a VERY rude and useless email, but it's not like it was unprovoked.
The initial message was polite and just asking a question. On the surface.
If you read between the lines, it can also sound quite entitled.
1. "Our customers..." - apparently it's part of their services or products in some way, which means they are getting paid for the mitmproxy developers work. Of they have a problem, they should ask "how can we help fix it?", not "when will it be done?"
2. "...in regulated industries [...] are prohibited by regulations..." - these are clients with deep pockets, which makes point 1 sound even worse. Also implying that their clients problems should somehow be a priority for the project maintainers. If I hadn't read the reply I would have guessed from the tone that they're already sponsoring the project somehow. It sounds like a friendly but somewhat frustrated paying customer to me .
3. "...s/w with known High and Critical severity vulnerabilities" a bit of a stretch but this could be interpreted as "your software is terrible and full of unpatched vulns".
I'm not writing this to say that the IBM guy is a bad person. I'm sure he's just trying to get his job done and communication is hard. Just trying to convey how messages that are following all the "rules" (be polite, don't make demands, don't call people names, ...) can still be interpreted as rude.
The "I hope you don't find this follow-up to be offensive -- that's certainly not my intention" part of the email sounds like someone that is aware that they're sometimes unintentionally offending people.
The intent behind the response from mhils is pretty clear to me. He points out that he's not being paid, that he doesn't appreciate the message, and that you can't make any demands unless you're willing to contribute somehow.
The problem is, I think, that this type of language isn't clear to everyone. The follow-up email just shows that the message didn't get across.
I don't know the IBM guy, maybe he's just entitled, but living around several very intelligent autistic people has made me see how common these types of interactions are. I think us non-autistic people can get better at recognizing the situations and adapt our communication to be more direct and precise without a lot of effort. It's often the case that the person on the other end is already spending a lot of energy on adapting.
Not excusing anyone's behavior of course. I just think this interaction could have had a lot of other outcomes.
