I'd say it comes from sitting at an ivory tower and giving 0 ducks about who you're talking to. In this case, the person/team asking was capable enough to go on their own, dig, test, change, and find a fix. It could've probably been easier for them if given proper directions.
OTOH, perhaps those that answered from atop the tower had little idea of the mechanisms that the author(s?) dug out and changed. So double shame on them, for being condescending and not knowing.
And it also falls on ourselves to be mindful of this behaviour, that can creep up on us without knowing. We sometimes think our time is super valuable and we don't have to spend it on some "newbie question" or this guy who doesn't understand. The past year I've been mentoring grad students in the lab I work at, and found myself once or twice going this route. I luckily caught it early, took a deep breath and gave them the time and explanations they needed. In the end I got a few nice surprises out of two amazing students, who were seeing a bit beyond what was evident.
I see many large project addressing this issue by not having a public list where you can talk directly to the developers. Instead there is user lists which public relation managers maintain and where the expected result from the original mail would either be no response or a polite and nicely written one about testing the user configuration options that they had already tested. That way the developer would not need to respond unless the user has shown enough proof of work to demonstrate to the public relation managers that the issue should be forwarded to a developer, in which case the answer the developer would reply with would be under the assumption that the person/team asking is capable enough to use the directions to dig, test, change, and create a patch which then later might be added to the project.
OTOH, perhaps those that answered from atop the tower had little idea of the mechanisms that the author(s?) dug out and changed. So double shame on them, for being condescending and not knowing.
And it also falls on ourselves to be mindful of this behaviour, that can creep up on us without knowing. We sometimes think our time is super valuable and we don't have to spend it on some "newbie question" or this guy who doesn't understand. The past year I've been mentoring grad students in the lab I work at, and found myself once or twice going this route. I luckily caught it early, took a deep breath and gave them the time and explanations they needed. In the end I got a few nice surprises out of two amazing students, who were seeing a bit beyond what was evident.