The diversity that I am talking about has nothing to do with the variability of code quality. Like you, I want to produce and to consume the best possible code

The diversity that I am talking about has nothing to do with the variability of code quality. Like you, I want to produce and to consume the best possible code. The diversity I'm talking about is in personality types. There's a lot of people, even on Hacker News, even in this thread, that would be excellent technical contributors to the Linux Kernel, except they have a personality type that requires them to spend more emotional energy dealing with verbal abuse, either directed at them, or just being flung about. As you say, size isn't the most important measure of a contributor pool. In my mind, angry, hateful language, especially if it is accepted by the whole, will greatly limit the amount of talent available. Good development and merge practices has and will continue to keep bad code out. And note, I have not said anything about being warm, friendly or inviting. I'm not necessarily suggesting those be specific goals. Finally, nowhere have I suggested that anybody stop working on features, and instead 'encourage the surrounding community to be nicer to one another'.