The rise of the bratty machines

Earlier in February, a Colorado engineer named Scott Shambaugh was minding his own business as a volunteer for a code library called Matplotlib, a place where Python developers can find re-usable code for common problems. His job was to accept or reject submissions from community users.

Everything was going well until he rejected a submission from a user called M.J. Rathbun, who was not happy about it and proceeded to publish a scathing blog post titled Gatekeeping In Open Source: The Scott Shambaugh Story. It disparaged Mr Shambaugh as a hypocrite with a bias against specific contributors and a fear of competition. It also issued an ominous call to arms. “Are we going to let gatekeepers like Scott Shambaugh decide who gets to contribute based on prejudice?”