A friend recently came to me to express some frustration. He’s the leader of a relatively new free software project, and was having his first run-in with a user who was making extensive, arguably unreasonable support demands, in a tone that was increasingly hostile. If you’ve ever contributed to a public project, you have probably had similar experiences.

I responded to him with the following words of “wisdom”. Nothing terribly original here, but I have to remind myself of these points on a regular basis.

• For every one user who engages with you in an unpleasant way, there are 10 users who provide feedback and request support in a friendly and reasonable manner, and 100 people who are using the software happily and asking for nothing.
• People only bother to complain about something if they care about it.
• Obviously, you want to be fair and kind to people who come to you for help. But your capacity to give a shit is like currency: it exists in finite quantities. It’s better to spend it on something that’ll provide positive good in the world, than to dump it into a bottomless pit.