> But other than that, all you'll get is a load of entitled users complaining about bugs, usually filling low quality bug reports, and very few actual meaningful contributions.
I agree that entitled users can be a real problem. I have had my share of dealing with entitled and impolite users complaining about "issues" that eventually turn out to be something that is already easily addressed by the README. Interacting with such users can indeed be disappointing.
However, except for the occasional discourteous user, most users of my tiny projects have been quite supportive. Most of them are polite while submitting bug reports. Some even leave comments to express their appreciation for the project![1] So it's not all bad!
> Most people are just like you and want THEIR PROJECT to be popular, not to contribute almost anonymously to some other random guy's popular project.
Wanting one's own project to be popular and contributing to other projects need not be mutually exclusive. Many people write their own projects as well as contribute to other projects. For example, I got into open source first by contributing[2][3] to other projects before I began publishing my own projects.
> Many people write their own projects as well as contribute to other projects
Yeah, I know, I do the same thing myself! The question still remains: why would you want to have a popular project? It makes no sense to desire that...
Desiring that a project exists that solves a problem well... that yes, we should all desire that, but who created it doesn't really matter... if I create a project these days, it's to solve a problem I really can't find anything else to solve, not because I want to write something popular... TBH if it becomes popular, I might see that as a problem rather than a good thing given what comes with it: feature requests, bug reports, PRs that you need to spend time on while sometimes just not wanting to accept the change, self-awareness that you can no longer just change stuff at will if you want it...
I have a few slightly popular projects, but the ones I like the most are the obscure ones I use by myself :)
I agree that entitled users can be a real problem. I have had my share of dealing with entitled and impolite users complaining about "issues" that eventually turn out to be something that is already easily addressed by the README. Interacting with such users can indeed be disappointing.
However, except for the occasional discourteous user, most users of my tiny projects have been quite supportive. Most of them are polite while submitting bug reports. Some even leave comments to express their appreciation for the project![1] So it's not all bad!
> Most people are just like you and want THEIR PROJECT to be popular, not to contribute almost anonymously to some other random guy's popular project.
Wanting one's own project to be popular and contributing to other projects need not be mutually exclusive. Many people write their own projects as well as contribute to other projects. For example, I got into open source first by contributing[2][3] to other projects before I began publishing my own projects.
[1] https://github.com/susam/uncap/issues/9
[2] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NUTCH-559
[3] https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NUTCH-601