Cult and control
A few times over the years I've had interaction with the devs of open source s/w. I assumed they were volunteers and tried to be as polite, positive and grateful as I can. I was trying to make a positive contribution, to improve the uptake of the s/w among ordinary users.
In each case I was making a case about usability of some aspect of the s/w, based on my work with supporting some very intelligent and proactive users, some at least quite technically aware. In each case my comments were couched quite gently, even tentatively. ("It might be easier for users if.." that sort of thing.)
I'm not a developer, but I am a very technically aware user, and was the technical support for a lot of ordinary users. So my feedback ought to have been useful, and welcome. I tried always to be positive.
In each case the response was, at best unresponsive, at worst quite negative and even abrasive in tone.
I was not insulting their mothers or promoting a heretical view of their religion - but you'd be surprised to hear that if you were to judge by the responses.
In most of the cases my suggestion was (IMAO) perfectly logical and reasonable, based upon my experience actually using the s/w and the comments of others who'd tried it - often at my suggestion.
In most of the cases the responses made little sense - not being about actual use, nor about (which would be understandable) some extra complexity in the coding. But rather along the lines of "We want it this way" or "We don't want to".
In one fairly recent (and trivial) such case, it's impossible to tell if there have been any recent new add-ons for the application, which means users have no way to know that some new functionality has become available. A rather unusual state of affairs. The devs response was that they wouldn't identify these because they "wanted all add-ons treated equally". I tried to point out that leaving a new add-on unknown about wasn't treating it equally. But, well....