[lmilcin]

I only have one rule: I only contact an open source developer if I believe resolving the problem would make the product better unless I am willing to offer them reasonable money to do it.

[qbasic_forever]

The preference of the developer doesn't feed into your decision to contact them? What if the repo readme says "this is provided as-is, I don't offer support"?

[lawn]

A counterpoint:

You may view this feature as making the product better, but it might not fit the vision of the owner/developer and to them it will only generate a maintenance burden and bloat.

[TheCoelacanth]

You can't know that before you contact them, though.

[einpoklum]

Doesn't (almost) every bug report/feature request meet this criterion?

[not2b]

This post is about when it is or isn't appropriate to directly contact the principal developer instead of using the established Slack or Github flows.