I myself am the beneficiary of many open-source projects. I readily acknowledge this.

That said, where my mind keeps going to is that open-source software is in many ways similar to communism. And communism failed for a reason.

If you want to freely give away your work, then by all means - do so. But do so with the understanding that you are promised absolutely nothing in return. No one owes you anything. This man would have been better off had he pursued a paying career and spent a reasonable amount of his free time working on this.