Talk More, Hate Less

If you’re a consumer unhappy with the pricing of a new start-up service, talk to the Real Live Human Beings there before plotting their downfall. They’ll probably listen.

You have better things to do than build half-baked, unsupported open-source competition to new start-up services.

Talking with people running the service will likely yield better results faster than cobbling a reactionary hack together with strangers.

I know it’s a pain in the ass. As a coder (and part-time, only semi-reformed-but-trying hater), it’s much easier to imagine all the ways that you could have done it better than the people who actually did something. It’s way easier to code, start vacant Google Groups, fire up empty Github repositories than it is to engage someone at a for-profit company in reasonable discourse.

Even so, give it a shot. Talk more, hate less.

After all, if talking with the Real Live Human Beings doesn’t work, you can still stick it to them with The Most Popular Open Source Project Evah.