FOSS or not FOSS, that's the question
Today in #claws IRC channel some user wanted to move away from Claws Mail to another MUA. That probably happens every day or two, so nobody really cares (I don't, at least).
Claws' storage format is MH, nothing exotic or unknown, hence there's no explicit exporting utilities, as requested by that user. Anyway one of the developers suggested mh2mbox, which seems a pretty straightforward option. Claws has also a mailmbox plugin, which can be populated with messages from MH folders, but when you have lots of them the task becomes boring :-)
Anyway, the point of this post was not the technicalities of conversion but more the ideas people has about FOSS. At some point, after some arguing about how developers doesn't listen to users and how wrong donating to the project had been, the user said:
12:54 < somebody> If I develop a system, and I want people to use it, then I
have a duty to listen to people and consider to make it
useable for them ... or else, they won't use it.
That's a huge misconception, probably because nobody reads the license nowadays. Yeah, it's free, just download it! Reading licen-what? It's free!
I'd put it clear: I'm not a company, I don't want people to use my software, I let people use it if it's useful to them, and of course I'd like it to be useful.
But if not, you already have the source and can (learn to) modify it at will, or pay some other to do so. Nothing else is given to you, remember:
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.