You are clearly in the author’s group 3: people who say we should just tolerate this sort of thing. In that spirit, I could simply say you’re full of shit and move on, fully knowing you won’t be convinced by anything I say, but I won’t do that.

Instead, I offer you this: the revised email is half the length of the original, and still makes the case as strongly as the first based on the logical arguments. How would you rewrite it?

I don’t mind being told “no, don’t do that; it’s stupid,” provided it’s backed up with logic and an alternative way to proceed. In this case, the second email does this (the alternative way to proceed being just don’t merge the changes, or reword the commit messages).

I have no problem with cursing. I probably curse a little too much, in fact, and here it clearly gets in the way of the message, which is, in both cases “I can live with doing this, but your reasoning as to why we should is wrong.” Or, more bluntly, “no, don’t do this for these stupid reasons.”

What I do have a problem with is gratuitous abuse of someone who’s attempting to make a positive contribution and has, apparently, submitted a reasonable pull request.