If the developers’ wants and needs don’t intersect with a given user, there is no way forward for that user, community manager or not.

I suspect the small size of the dev team and the general nature of an OSS project means there aren’t swarms of people around volunteering to be community managers.

Small projects your sway with the project is directly proportional to your ability to submit pull requests. It’s just a sad fact that it’s easier to say “I wish we had feature X” vs. “Here is a pull request that implements feature X”.

At least with OSS you are getting what you paid for (nothing!), vs commercial companies where you pay for the software and they STILL ignore you.

Even “Why don’t you open an issue on our source tracker” will often effectively shut down suggestions from less tech savvy newcomers.

How should developers handle feature requests? Keep in mind there is a need for the whole team to see the suggestion and it’s also good to have a place to gather feedback and further discuss.