I’m the maintainer and admin of a few different open source packages, perhaps most notable in the curl project but I also poke on c-ares and libssh2 and I do a fair amount of work on Rockbox and hang around in a few other projects as well.

I write around 400-500 emails a month, the majority of them to the mailing lists of the projects I’m involved in. I try to respond to questions I know the answer to.

I’m not sure if I’ve grown even more grumpy recently or if the world is going downwards, but I’ve recently been called rude and a scammer in public mailing lists after having answered to mails with a meaning that the guys asking the question isn’t exactly trying hard to read up on this, understand the area nor are they reading my answers very good. So what if I’m not always the perfect gentleman or say the right “social” words, I am a hard core tech guy and I answer and talk technical stuff and specific details all day long. That’s what I do and that’s who I am.

So, I just wanted to let the rest of you know: I am rude and mean and you should know better than to ask anything in a forum I frequent. Or then you can of course stand up against the whiners and help educate the world on how to ask questions and why spoon-feeding users on mailing lists isn’t a good idea.

Sticking out your chin in the harsh internet reality, one should expect to get hit like this every now and then and you need to grow pretty thick skin to not let the bad guys get to you. Nonetheless, people in general are nice but it is just too easy for people to get upset and send away very rude mails without any kind of aftermath.

(But I must admit I found the threat to discuss me at a future Zend conference hilarious!)