When people complain about GitLab I always try to give a positive response, thanking them for their feedback and trying to address their point. People complain because they care about you getting better. As the project matured the expectations are higher so there are more complains. Which means I say sorry a lot more. But as the project matures people are also no longer expecting the CEO to care and say sorry anymore. So when I respond to a complaint the tone of the poster frequently changes. Some of these initial complainers have turned into fans and contributors of the project.<p>Your code is not you and neither is your project. As maintainer you are not responsible for fixing all bugs (we at GitLab Inc. are, but that is another story). If people care to complain it is OK to ask them to contributing a fix or showing the advantages of a different approach.