the issue that wanted a 24 hour response time. from a company. for free.

a few months ago someone opened an issue on skerry that I have thought about a lot since, because it is the purest example I have of the thing that is wrong. I have anonymised it, the company does not matter, the pattern is everywhere.

Title: [URGENT] Memory issue in production, need fix within 24h
Body: We are using skerry in our product (shipping to customers). We have found a memory issue under high load. This is impacting our customers and is business critical for us. Please advise on your SLA for critical issues and provide a timeline for a fix. Our security team is standing by.

let us count the things here. it is "URGENT" and "business critical" for them. they ship skerry in a product they sell. they have a security team, which is more than I have. they want an SLA. they have never contributed a line, filed a sponsorship, or said thank you. and "please advise on your SLA" to a volunteer is like walking into a stranger's kitchen and asking when dinner will be served.

what I actually did

I was not cruel. I asked for a reproducer, because "memory issue under high load" is not a bug report, it is a feeling. they sent nothing useful for a week. then a junior engineer at the same company, clearly embarrassed, sent me a clean minimal reproducer on their own time. it was a genuine bug, an allocation that was not freed on one error path. I fixed it that evening and credited the junior, not the company.

the thing I want companies to understand

• open source means you can use it for free. it does not mean the author works for you for free.
• "our security team is standing by" is a threat dressed as help. standing by to do what, exactly? you could have had them write the reproducer.
• if skerry failing "impacts your customers" and is "business critical", that is an argument for paying for support, not for demanding it. you insured everything else in that product. you free rode on the parser.
• the junior engineer is the hero of this story and their manager will never know.

I do not want anyone's pity and I fixed the bug because it was real and because people's products depend on it. but if the word "SLA" appears in an issue on an unpaid project, the correct SLA is the one you are paying for. nej.