The social contract of open source

Brett Cannon making a point, grounded in philosophy, about the relationship between open-source maintainers and users of their software

When you treat a maintainer as a means to getting something from their software you are not morally treating them appropriately as an end (in other words, you’re simply using them), and thus not treating them morally as a human being. But when you treat a maintainer as a fellow human being who may be able to do you a favour of their own volition, then you end up in an appropriate relationship where you are not trying to use the maintainer for something specific.

And to conclude:

There should be no expectations toward the next commit, next release, etc. when you realize open source maintainers really don’t owe you anything. If you view open source code from that perspective then you will view it as a gift when it exists at all. As such, hopefully you feel less frustrated when open source doesn’t go the way you want since it was all a gift to begin with. And that then will lead you to treat maintainers as an end in and of themselves and thus as a fellow human being.