Pattern Parasites Are Real—And They're Sending Me Angry Emails

Dropping Rails 7.1 support in a decade-old open-source project set off an entitlement storm I didn’t expect—complete with geographic sneers, demands for infinite backward compatibility, and accusations of disrupting dog walks.

Welcome to open source in 2025.

I thought “Pattern Parasites”—dark satire I wrote in my Atlas Monkey Chronicles about entities that feed on technical debt—were pure fiction.

Turns out, they’re real. And they’re emailing me directly. Here’s the email that arrived this morning.

“However, I must say I am becoming fed up with the handling of documentation and code. It gives me headaches.

First, you dropped support for the old Ruby versions. Then, without asking the community, you dropped support for the old Rails versions. So. This decision makes now much more work for me. I have projects requiring testing from version 3.0.0 upwards. Now I must explain to my boss why I need more time – only because someone in Morocco decides his project supports only 3.2+? This is not good practice.”

This isn’t just an email. It’s a perfect specimen of entitlement culture. Let’s perform an autopsy.

An Autopsy of Entitlement

• The Delusion of Ownership: “Without asking the community”—the open-source equivalent of “I want to speak to the manager.” My unpaid labor doesn’t come with voting rights.

• The Geographic Sneer: “Someone in Morocco”—a casual prejudice suggesting software is only valid if it’s made in Palo Alto.

• The Projection of Dysfunction: “Now I must explain to my boss why I need more time”—their tech debt isn’t my emergency. This is responsibility outsourcing at its finest.

• Version Hoarding: Demanding compatibility for a Ruby version released five years ago isn’t “stability”; it’s digital necromancy.

The Parasitic Mindset

The email continues, and the absurdity deepens.

“Instead of taking my dog for a walk, I see a notification about your new release. Great. Now I must prepare a report by next week explaining the changes, with examples. My schedule is full!”

Imagine being angry that a notification you subscribed to interrupted your dog walk. “Your free software update made me skip Fido’s potty break!” Sorry, I didn’t realize my release notes came with a canine compatibility Service Level Agreement.

And then, the crescendo of condescension:

“But the code is not only much to read… the examples use Spaceships and Weapons? What the hell? Where is ‘Matz is nice, so we are nice’? This is not Ruby-like! Please make order here ASAP.”

Ah, the documentation police. My apologies, I forgot that creative examples are forbidden. And invoking “Matz is nice, so we are nice”? That’s rich, coming from someone who just spent three paragraphs being anything but nice.

Fun fact: a spaceship example removes domain complexity, making the actual pattern clearer than another boring User and Order model. But parasites prefer familiar mediocrity over clarity.

And the demand: “Please make order here ASAP.”

Cool. I’ll drop everything to rewrite free documentation because a stranger on the internet yelled “ASAP.” Is there a SaaS tier for that?

But entitled demands are only one flavor of parasite. Sometimes, the “gratitude” is even more insulting.

I once got an email from a company thanking me for a deployment tool that saved them “hundreds of thousands” by moving off AWS. They wanted my address to send a “gift package to improve my work.”

4kg package. €50 in Moroccan customs fees that I paid.

What did I get? AliExpress toys with their logo, metal cups, 500 stickers, and product brochures. They saved hundreds of thousands, I got charged €50 for promotional junk.

That’s the real “thank you” economy of open source.

This Is Why We Burn Out

This email is a textbook example of why maintainers abandon their projects. It’s not the code; it’s the entitlement. It’s the endless expectation to serve corporate needs, support obsolete stacks, and absorb complaints, all for zero compensation.

Thanks to a since-deleted LinkedIn post, I know who sent this. For a moment, I considered putting their name on blast. But exposing one parasite solves nothing. The problem isn’t a single developer having a bad day; it’s the corrosive, widespread mindset they represent.

My energy is better spent building the future than fighting ghosts from the past.

Choose Your Side

This incident reveals the two paths in open source. You’re either enabling one or the other.

The Parasite:

• Demands infinite backward compatibility.
• Treats volunteers like unpaid interns.
• Believes their convenience is more important than progress.

The Contributor:

• Embraces progress and upgrades regularly.
• Respects maintainers’ unpaid labor.
• Gives back—with a thank you, a bug report, or a sponsorship.

Every maintainer faces this choice: serve the parasites or serve progress.

I choose progress. The parasites can keep their legacy codebases. The rest of us are building the future.

state_machines-activerecord 0.40.0 is available now. It’s leaner, faster, and parasite-free.

Captain’s Log, Stardate 2025.193 - End Transmission

Captain Seuros, RMNS Atlas Monkey

“Per aspera ad astra, per angry emails ad /dev/null”