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It's also kind of arrogant of FOSS advocates to say "just make a pull request" whenever there's criticism of anything FOSS. You could spend weeks working on something only to have the maintainer say no and I've seen this happen and every time it does I just think to myself "welp there's another person who will never make another pull request again".

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As a FOSS maintainer I always try to make it clear that before trying your luck with a PR, you should always first engange in a conversation with me.

Seems kind of obvious to my eyes, asking, talking, discussing about some change before doing the actual work. But as it seems, "obviousness" is in the eye of the beholder...

That's fine and all except that the typical refrain from internet folks is that if something is free then you are not allowed to critique, comment, or request changes. If you really care about freedom you can handle a little bit of online banter.

No one is saying you're not allowed to critique the software. You're critiquing the people who create that software for free

Then fork it? No one is stopping you.

I assume you don't care about missing out on updates since that's the free work you're complaining about

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