There is no such thing as the spirit of open source. This is a stand-in for an actual argument that bridges the gap between your own philosophy and the reality of maintaining a project.

However, if you were so inclined to believe otherwise, please explain to me how that spirit of open source would not have simply dictated that either the project get rebuilt from scratch or simply cloned before inclusion?

It's not hard to recognise the human problem and try to work with that. Instead: We find braindead allegiance and arrogance throwing shit on either side of the fence.

The open source community is in trouble if this is the direction we're moving in