Kovid Goyal, the developer of Calibre, is a very responsive, very gentle person. Whenever I needed help, I have gotten help from him. [1] - Calibre is an indispensable tool for me to manage my digital library with close to 800 books.
I support him regularly. Consinder doing it as well if you appreciate the app. Go to https://calibre-ebook.com/ , there’s a support link on the top right.
Yeah kitty is amazing. I've been meaning to donate as a thank you. It's made so many things possible. In fact, because of it's flexibility, today I wrote a vscode extension that can use some of kitty's remote control features so I can execute things in my terminal of choice straight from my editor of choice.
I just wrote it today and still need to package it. I was tired of alt+tab + up arrow + enter constantly to execute builds etc. in my terminal. It calls out to a kitty wrapper script I wrote[1] that (eg) queries kitty for its running windows so that when I launch from vscode it can find the right kitty window for the vscode workspace and execute there...
Point is, Kovid Goyal is awesome and the extensibility he wrote into kitty makes all that possible. I didn't know he was also the author of Calibre for a long time.
I think he’s really dedicated to making a specific thing and gets frustrated when users ask for “Swiss Army knife” features. I have empathy for that situation.
That said, being unkind to otherwise civil users is never OK.
There are so many good projects out there AND with good people running them. (Not saying kitty's dev is not a good person.) I like to use free software created by people who are pleasent to deal with, because more often than with closed source software, we'll end up having to communicate for one reason or other. :) My favorite terminal chosen in this fashion AND technical merit is wezterm. It really is fantastic all around.
I'm not talking about the security incident. Anyone can have bad days, I am not the one to hold the grudge.
What I've experienced is that Kovid is consistently hostile to anyone who disagrees with him in the slightest. There is no attempt to shine light on the argument or defuse the situation whatsoever - it always ends with comments like "what do you want from me? you get this project for free! if you don't like it nobody is forcing you to use it! get off my lawn!!!".
Of course, the guy has the right to talk to anyone any way he wants.
But I also have the right to publicly call him out on that.
That's great for those developers but you can't expect everyone to act the same way. The fact is that you have not right for ANY support - there is even a disclaimer for that in pretty much every open source license.
I'm not talking about rights, I'm talking about manners.
Everyone has the right to communicate any way they want,
but I also have the right to call them out on that.
If you have a public, open-source project on GitHub, and you regularly accept and respond to issues/pull-requests/suggestions, you are obviously presenting yourself to the world. It is basic courtesy to not be hostile in such communication.
It is very difficult to communicate with Kovid when you're not a user and you've not previously praised his genius. Any kind of criticism or suggestion that isn't wrapped up in the "but your project is awesome and you're awesome!!!" wrapping-paper is met with hostility, insults and banning.
It is a problem for anyone trying to communicate with him.
Criticism or suggestion seems fine. Insulting is not. The one example I saw were someone was effectively making your claim was someone insulting him and him responding without any hostility, insults, or banning.
You are attacking the character of someone but can't even be bothered to provide anything to back up your claims? Then why post this in the first place?
Because that's my experience and I'm sharing it with others.
Are you saying I shouldn't voice my opinions, unless they consist of only praise? Nobody asked the original commenter to provide proof of Kovid being "gentle". If you're going down the "only facts" road, then each praise should be followed by "sources" too.
I support him regularly. Consinder doing it as well if you appreciate the app. Go to https://calibre-ebook.com/ , there’s a support link on the top right.
[1] This is the forum dedicated to Calibre https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=166