Keep in mind that maintainers of large projects are often burned or stressed out. On top of that, the "German" guy's first language is probably not English, it's German. You can't expect for every non-native speaker to always hit the "right" tone not because they are rude, but because they translate it from another language.

I think calling open source "greedy" is an antithesis and a sentiment that if repeated enough burns out the best maintainers. They do not work for the software's adopters and it is their fair right to ask for money if they spend time on doing work that only benefits others.

I recommend reading a bit about open source and expectation management: https://mikemcquaid.com/2018/03/19/open-source-maintainers-o...

In any case, it is unfortunate that the interaction did not meet your expectations. Keycloak is a great project, with a great community, and if it solves your needs you have made the correct choice!

"the guy" is usually very helpful in the community forum. He has also answered my questions a couple of times in the chat as well even though he has probably heard then 100 times already.

So that was definitely not my experience.

One time when I needed more consulting for a greenfield project, my company paid for one hour with him which was well spent as well.

I don't see how you can be productive and giving support for free with such a small team at the same time.

* I am not affiliated / not a paying customer. Just a happy user of the open source version.

His responses sometimes come across as abrasive, but he means no offcence I believe. Maybe it's a cultural, German, thing, don't know. Don't give up, just continue calm and polite discussion and conversation will go back to the right track.

Yes, my cultural sensitivity training and experience says Germans (let's call him Heinz) are abrasive to Brits and Americans (John). Germans are very direct and mean what they say far more literally than John. Indirect questions and suggestions, that might sound like a very straightforward thing to you are nothing Heinz will understand. John: "Should we talk about this some more?" G: "No, I don't think that is necessary". If John takes up the topic again, Heinz will be annoyed with him, because John asked for his decision, heard his decision and ignored it.

If John criticizes Heinz in the usual english "irrelevant positive, important negative, irrelevant positive" structure, Heinz's takeaway will be "mostly positive with minor problems". All the while John meant the negative to be a major problem and just wanted to cushion the blow. If Heinz wants to convey criticism, he will give you just the negative, nothing else. Whatever isn't mentioned is OK. John will understand this as devastating criticism, because absolutely nothing positive was mentioned. But actually Heinz liked everything and just has this minor nit to pick... If Heinz likes everything he'll say "it's fine". John might be wondering why he didn't mention anything Heinz liked explicitly and if this is Heinz being passive aggressive.

There is a lot more to it, and of course there are nuances to it, e.g. Heinz might come from various German regions that differ in their usual behaviour and may even seem overly rude or overly friendly to other Germans.

That's very interesting observation and well put summary. Do you have similar insights about other nations? :)

Not really, my language skills are not sufficient beyond German and English.

I use Hydra and have had nothing but good experiences when asking questions.

Let's hope Red Hat doesn't pull the rug from under Keycloak, like they did not so long ago with CentOS.

Ever since the acquisition CentOS has been the odd one out with Red Hat’s open source strategy - being downstream from the commercial product.

Keycloak won’t have a similar issue, it’s already the upstream project for Red Hat SSO.