I feel like the takeaway here should be that the experience of contributing to the project was not great. That’s it.
There is value in complaining, even if you don’t have solutions. You can only make people aware of the consequences that their actions have caused by telling them.
I don’t even take issue with him posting this publicly to his own Dev blog. I think its a perfectly fine piece of on-the-job experience OP has shared. Maybe in a few years he would like to come back to it with a different perspective.
I do however think that OP posting this here (and apparently other boards) is a choice I don’t agree with. I think OP would have been better served writing a response email to the maintainer, explaining how they felt. Beyond that, what can one do?
You just have to put in a little more effort. I have avoided Amazon for a year now by buying from smaller shops found through price comparison portals. Also, I buy more stuff in the local brick-and-mortar shops. And I buy less bullshit. All in all, my live hasn’t gotten any worse.