Comment by raphlinus

I think I understand the intensity of emotion here. Open source is a really high trust community, more so than a lot of real-world spaces. Yet, it's adjacent to some other areas where poorly tuned incentives cause bad behavior. Spamming for free t-shirts is a relatively harmless manifestation. It's just some attention, though attention is our most valuable resource. I'm also reminded of cases where people take over undermaintained plugins to insert malicious behavior; it's the same kind of thing, just farther along on the badness scale.

I'd love it if we're able to preserve the high trust nature of open source. I also wouldn't be surprised if it starts eroding. If that's the case, this kind of thing is the tip of the spear, and in that light it makes sense to get pretty upset about it.