As a "potential" end user you have a complete right to complain about the missing feature, as much annoying it can be for the developer of the open source thing. The developer has the same right to just answer "send me the patch". In the end of the day, patch won't be sent, and feature will still be missing. Other users might also miss that feature, and not become users. If that's fine to the project authors, it's also fine for me. Just wanted to say, maybe not that clearly, that "send me the patch" is perfectly appropriate answer to developer, and not a good answer to the end user. And you can't just assume that everyone complaining about the feature is the developer.
That's a good attitude to have. I just wanted to point out that open source projects don't have to follow the normal market economics of regular, for sale software, so the developer/user relationship can be very, very different. There seems to be friction when the users don't notice this, and think they are still being courted as possible sales.
