this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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I used to contribute to a very large open source project. One day I posted a blog about our project not really needing users, except that some small portion of users turned into developers. The users were incensed. "How can you not need us?" It was a "The customer is always right" mindset, except that doesn't work with open source when they're using something they downloaded for free.
That said, Lemmy might be a special exception, because it's goal is to have a lot of users -- network effects are important to the health and longevity of social media platforms. So Lemmy might actually need the users to be a healthy project. Unfortunately, this will create a bunch of entitled users in the process :/
You've put your finger on the thing that was bothering me about the tone of the original post - it's very similar to a Nextdoor post.
Eh, this situation seems more like the "admins"/power users of the software saying "How can you not need us?" - and for them, that's more of a point. These are the people who submit bug reports, code features or plugins on a weekend, and generally turn your one product into a rich ecosystem of interconnected experiences. One can argue that the project doesn't technically require their participation, but they do enhance the project in many different ways.
open-source entitlement is a thing, but I'm not sure that this is the same thing. I for one would be happy to submit changes (and even have a couple brewing for my own use on my instance). Just don't make the spam problem worse in the meantime by pushing out a version that's missing a crucial (if imperfect) feature.