I'd argue that you're the one misunderstanding open source if you think that this is unfair. While there's a very real problem of people unfairly demanding things from open source projects, choosing not to use a project is perfectly fair. In fact, it's one of the _correct_ alternatives to unfairly demanding things from the project; just like someone making something open source has no obligation to do any work even if they're offered help or compensation for it, no one is obligated to use their work for any reason, and they're free to use whatever criteria they want to make the decision of whether to use it or not. The lack of obligation goes both ways; people can publish open source projects without owing anybody anything, but no one owes them anything for it either, and good faith technical criticism is fair game. (Bad faith technical criticism is bad of course, just like any bad faith takes in any other context ).