"Background checks" is loaded language. Should GIT repo owners have some reason to trust people before accepting pull requests? What does that look like? Is it about their politics or about their ability to code?

Don't we have explicit reputation scores baked in already? Sure looks like it. Even the BFDL have lower thresholds of acceptance based on past behaviour and "reputation"

But I would agree with a sense this looks very like parody. Nobody is setting out to design free software to "other" the user, or exclude contributions because you are not a white cis male. Are there reactionaries in charge of some software suites? Sure. There's all kinds.

A reminder that William Shockley was an overt Eugenicist racist. Every gate on your computer owes a debt to the transistor, designed by a white supremacist. We'd have got there eventually of course, but we don't have time machines and we can't erase the past, or the path which got us here.