As bad as the author comes off in that exchange, Mr. Haitzler comes off worse. Nobody should respond to their customers like that, least of all in a public forum, regardless of the provocation.
And even a customer is not some holy being that gets to behave in any way they like and it has to be accepted "regardless of the provocation". What he wrote has FUD and professionally damaging to mr. Haitzler (as a programmer), while also wrong in most aspects.
Nobody should just bend over for someone (even a "customer") "regardless of the provocation". Besides FUD and insults, should the "regardless" also allow for sexual or racist comments from a customer?
And speaking of duties, does the company (Samsung) see well to an employee of them bad-mouthing their OS and choices on some random forum?
Unless you have evidence to the contrary...?
> Nobody should just bend over for someone...
There is a world of difference between being assertive (which is fine) and being dismissive and belittling (which is not). Mr. Haitzler went way over the line. He thought that tit for tat was appropriate. It is not.
By the way, given the rather suggestive way you phrased this, you might want to check your own use of sexualized comments before criticizing someone else's.
Now I am aware that several leaders of several major open-source communities do not consider such restraint to be necessary or even desirable. They're of course welcome to manage their communities as they see fit. I think it's a mistake though, and I believe it will lead inevitably to serious issues in those communities, if indeed it hasn't already.
1. Write a long and angry rant about how terrible the software is on a public forum.
2. File issues, participate in the community, ask questions on the mailing list, submit pull requests to improve the docs, try and understand the design decisions behind the software you're using - it's possible that the author knows more about the problem than you, and there are perfectly good reasons for why things are as they are.
One of these things is more productive than the other.
I do have to note, though, that the options are actually:
1. Use something else that's better.
2. <same as what you wrote above>
Based on everything I've read about EFL, including responses from its devs, #1 is by far the most productive choice you can make in these circumstances.
The rant is not really an option as such. It's just a way for someone to vent their frustration, which people occasionally need when dealing with problems like that in order to make themselves feel sane again. You can rant first, but you still have a choice of #1 or #2.
I also have to note that, for the author of the rant, neither was an option, because they weren't working on a project where they had a choice of framework - they were working on Tizen, and had to use EFL, that choice being made for them. I also doubt that their manager would allow them to use some of their work hours to go fix bugs in EFL, even assuming its maintainers would agree that these things are bugs (which they clearly didn't) - they had their own backlog and schedule. So they did the rant because they felt like they needed it, and they didn't really have the option of either #1 or #2 to fix anything.
Why plug every hole in a colander when you can use a bowl from another supplier?