Wow no. He sends a polite answer explaining his motivations. His "going in fresh" is actually a very good method, because the solution 'Morty' provided might seem like a good solution, but that doesnt make it one. Especially from a junior, you might want to double check everything, as they simply have less experience, thus might provide solutions which don't work very well, but only experience call tell you why.

If time is a issue, 'Rick' could always ask for a proposed solution, but now two people have spend time trying to solve it, where it's the task of 'Rick', not 'Morty' to do so. ('Rick' should still try to solve it, as it's a good skill to develop, but get feedback on your solution after it's fixed, compare it to the applied fix)

@Martijn I don't think it is polite. It's very passive aggressive. Thinking that you're better placed to solve the problem is fine - asserting that anyone else's input will only be something between useless and actively harmful is just narcissism.

Maybe it's a friendly fellow in real life and when you hear his tone of voice, it's a friendly mail. Could also be that he isn't, but making him the bad guy before knowing that, is kind of behaving like a ESED :) But I get the feeling I'm the only one thinking this haha.

@Martijn - saying "please consume manure" instead of "eat shit" is not any more polite. Politeness is not merely about forms.

@Daniel That could just be policy. At my workplace we routinely copy the teams of both parties in an email for redundancy.

@Michael narcissism is CCing the entire development team to announce a problem you found with someone's work and your "fix" rather than privately discussing it with them. The response was appropriate.

@Martijn In cases where I accidentally read a diff before realizing what it is, I purposely spend at least several days trying to forget so I can go into it fresh. Does this really sound reasonable to you?

@Michael: Could you explain what he should have said if he wanted to politely ask others not to send him suggested fixes? Sounds to me like you think the entire that going in with a fresh mind can be helpful is just entirely scientifically bonkers, which is rather... disconcerting.

I agree with this answer. Morty was trying to be helpful -- it should be much easier for Rick to verify that the fix is correct than to do all the troubleshooting himself. To purposely ignore this and slow down the process seems unreasonable. The only inappropriate thing Morty might have done was CC'ing the team.

@Mehrdad There's probably no way he could do this reasonably, since it's an unreasonable requirement in the first place.

@Barmar: Why is it unreasonable? It sounds to me like he's been through this a million times before and empirically found out that he comes up with better solutions when he's not provided with any. Is it really so insulting of him to inform people of this fact? It's not like he's doing this for his own personal gain or to any other person's detriment.... he's just trying to give his best shot for the product, and he's found that not being given a solution a priori is helpful. That's all. Why go out of your way to take it personally?

@Mehrdad I've been a programmer for 40 years, and I doubt that he's correct in that assessment. It seems more like he just has such a high opinion of himself that he doesn't think anyone else can be helpful. It's this attitude that's unreasonable, and voicing it will always sound condescending. The best he can do is send a polite thank you and then ignore the help (although Morty might wonder why the next release still has the bug that could have been fixed trivially).

@Barmar: Maybe he's wrong, maybe he's right... nobody's arguing who's correct. The point is, even if he's wrong, that doesn't make his assessment of his own abilities unreasonable, let alone somehow insulting. Wouldn't you find it more insulting if someone over the internet who doesn't even know who you are claimed you he had a better understanding of your (dis-)abilities than you, and claiming he must be right just because he's been coding longer than you? I know I would.

@Mehrdad When I read that email, I see an attitude of superiority and condescension that I find unbelievable in anyone. Claiming that he has to go out of his way to forget helpful information is beyond reason.

@Mehrdad I actually did that already

@Michael: Ooh nice, yeah I agree, that's a great way to put it!!

@Mehrdad, I would write, "Thanks Morty. For future reference we really need bug reports entered into (our bug tool) so we can keep track of and manage the workload properly. If you take the time to find a solution please include it in the bug report but it's ok if you just report it to us. We'll make sure any ripple effects the the rest of the code base are considered in our solution. Sincerely, Rick"

@Barmar Imagine a different conversation, in which Morty says "Good morning" and Rick says "Thanks for the sentiment, but from experience I've found that I'm so much smarter than everyone around me that any form of communication with other people brings me down closer to their level. I'd appreciate if in future you don't talk to me and ideally remain out of my line of sight. Thanks in advance" Can you see how the unreasonable assessment he's making there is inextricably linked to the rudeness of his request?

This note is really judgmental. The way I would respond to either Morty or Rick would be to ask they call, chat or meet me in person. The larger concern presented by the example here is that code is being casually passed via bulk cc’ed email lists in 2018. Now that is a problem waiting to happen.

-1 Without more context, it's hard to say who is more right or wrong. The open source world is generally built upon people finding issues AND providing fixes. If Rick is consistently taking several days to think carefully about 1 line fixes and rejecting any assistance, then Rick is in the wrong. If Morty has other priorities and should not be doing this or has a history of suggesting poor fixes, then Morty is in the wrong.