About this "your software" mindset - uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues GitHub Wiki

This is a response to the "your software" mindset I have seen many times here and elsewhere. I will quote a statement from a real occurrence (the context does not matter). My emphasis:

You should appreciate people using your software and taking the time to report bugs.

This statement has bothered me when I read it, because it misses completely the big picture.

your software

uBlock Origin is licensed GPLv3. If you click the "Fork" button at the top of a project's Github page, this software becomes yours.

Try it.

So now that this software is yours, re-consider this part of the sentence:

taking the time

Now that the software is yours, what apparently you saw as some sort of favor ("taking the time"), was actually a favor to yourself in retrospect, and also in retrospect, you hopefully can now appreciate the huge amount of time spent by others on what is now your software.