It's certainly a problem in a wider scope than just software development, and not really inherent to software development at all, but I think it manifests in op

It's certainly a problem in a wider scope than just software development, and not really inherent to software development at all, but I think it manifests in open source communities in a particularly insidious way. Everybody thinks they're philosophically on the right side anyway, they're too smart for prejudice and too useful a community member to possibly be part of the problem. Also I figure people rely on meritocracy being some sort of infallible system, in some sort of just-world fallacy where they figure if this guy who's screaming bloody murder on the mailing list were wrong to do so, surely someone would have stopped him, right...? But he's got all these patches in the tree, so that means he's correct by definition, and that's more important than "real-life" social norms anyway.