That sort of patch is clearly fixing something that blocked him, and probably blocked many others who didn't get as far as trying to fix it.
A project should take on useful small patches, thats how you onboard contributors.
That sort of patch is clearly fixing something that blocked him, and probably blocked many others who didn't get as far as trying to fix it.
A project should take on useful small patches, thats how you onboard contributors.
That again assumes a project is looking to onboard contributors.
I absolutely get that it was an unfortunate interaction from the email writer's perspective, and it's really unfortunate.
But there are a lot of concerns/bureaucracy, etc in case of large projects like this. It may just never got to the person responsible, because it is a cross-cutting concern (so no clear way to assign it to someone) with a low priority.
They keep stringing him along in the process to onboard him as a contributor. The issue is the split personality in wanting but not acting on onboarding, with no meaningful communication. Your last paragraph about bureaucracy is exactly the complaint of the post. I don't see it as a defense. We can all throw our hands up and say "shit happens", and we can all agree it invariably does happen sometimes, but it's not a defense, per se.