In order to be the leader of a successful project, there are two key skills that you need to have: (a) you need to set very high standards for you and your deve

In order to be the leader of a successful project, there are two key skills that you need to have: (a) you need to set very high standards for you and your development team, (b) you need to be able to rally talented developers to want to work with you and your team. How you treat the less-talented people is not terribly important (at least not in terms of how it effects the success or failure of your project in a direct fashion); and if you are someone who has very high standards, and someone who does not have very high standards but which insists on wanting to "help", it's not surprising if you will end up giving them a short, even brusque answer. Dealing with incompetent people who pester you with github pull requests with crap code or crap commit descriptions is an interesting problem. It's not like a startup, where you can fire them, or put them through a very careful interview screening process and refusing to hire the less talented. So combine this tendency towards perfectionism, and interactions with someone who is more persistent than competent. What do you think will happen? So in answer to your question: Can you get into the hub position while being a prick to talented developers? No, of course not. Do you have to be equally nice and perhaps have to show even more patience to the idiots? No, of course not. And if taking the time to try to educate every single idiot which crosses your path and wants to "help", means that you don't have enough time to push your project ahead, ultimately that can end up hurting the success of your project.