Hostility, inclusivity, and target mismatch in open source community management

The reputation that open source communities have for hostility is justified. Open source communities, particularly those surrounding older projects or those whose members are mostly part of the old guard, tend to be elitist (in the sense that they expect a high level of competence from even new contributors and react with hostility to contributions that don’t meet their standards). Whether or not this is a bad thing depends on which of several groups you belong to within the open source sphere.