I agree that the vast majority of people take a lot of open source for granted.
However, a lot of open source projects are, frankly, extremely rude to users. Instead of some copy-paste "kindly please direct your question to this resource over here" the users get "GET THE @#%% OUT OF HERE STUPID N00b" and this is from people directly with the project (e.g., domain email address).
If you think this doesn't impact your donations and recognition, please rethink that a little bit further.
Please remember: each open source project is a different person, sometimes literally. That they share licensing ideologies does not necessarily mean the people producing them behave the same way. That said it's fairly well known that the pressure of hoards of obligated users on popular projects can easily push the most patient of authors over the edge.
As some anecdata: My experience in various open source projects as a submitter of bugs, fixes and features has been welcomed with respect and understanding even when we don't agree or I turn out to be the ignorant one.
My comment is specifically regarding users, not contributors, and the intent is not to generalize across all projects (though many users will do this anyway).
I have seen projects where devs are completely behind a wall, and that's fine, but I don't understand make something for people to use, free of charge, get angry at when lots of people use it and have questions about using it.
I’d like to see some nice analysis on this because my experience was completely the opposite.
I don’t work on open source much (a few lines over 20 years), but the only patch I made was super welcoming and a dev bent over backwards to teach me how to diff and submit patches. I just assumed this was common.
This is also my (limited) experience, though one does find... less than welcoming maintainers. :) It depends a lot in how you approach the project though. Being humble and careful not to waste maintainers' time more than necessary goes a long way. Remember, it's their free time they are donating to you, so make sure that you went extra mile to really prove that the bug is in the project and not in your code.
> Remember, it's their free time they are donating to you, so make sure that you went extra mile to really prove that the bug is in the project and not in your code.
This is kind of what I'm trying to address, which is the belief that the creator of the project is owed something and thus also free to be a jerk. Most users are not going to donate money, but some of us do so on occasion. I usually donate when a project is in dire straits just because I don't have a lot of cash floating around for myself, though over the decades this has added up to thousands of dollars donated.
However, when I see a project has been rude to users, or even actual experience see a project desperate for funds that was rude to me, I don't donate a thing no matter if I use it a lot. I don't believe in treating users like doormats and won't support it.
Open source means that you can pay anyone you want to work on it. You don't have to donate to the original maintainer. Although if you like the person and they are clearly stressed out and suffering and lashing out at people, it may be in your interest to help them deal with that first, rather than ignoring them and letting the project flounder. If you don't have the bandwidth to give money then that's fine, you can help in other ways. But I don't think it is wise to dismiss maintainer stress and burnout, or view it as a personal attack against you. Unless of course, you are burnt out yourself and need some help too, in which case, there's a lot you could do, but you probably have heard all the generic advice already. Personally I always try to remember that the goal is to see the project succeed, NOT to try to punish someone for perceived bad behavior.
The opposite is the real problem: Employees being forced to be friendly and accomodating to every customer who thinks they're entitled to feel like royalty because they're paying a few dollars for their drink.
FOSS projects are just a reversal of the roles. They let the creators react more honestly. You're not a paying customer, so don't expect to be treated as if you were the developer's boss.
Opensource/free software powers most of the stuff we take for granted. The software and their maintainers are equally taken-for-granted.