But the people can make you do what they want by threatening drama, basically using terror tactics.

Presumably if the general reaction whenever someone raised an issue involving bigotry was for everyone to instantly take on board what they were saying, you might be right. From my experience however, that is definetly not the world we live in. To be honest, even if it was, I think you need to draw a line between hypothetically possible and an observation of what actually happens in the world. The real question is, can you point out any examples of 'terror tactics' (in the context given I take this to mean people using bigotry as a reason for change without actually beleiving it is bigoted)? I wouldn't worry till then

I have clearly indicated that the project has to think hard in such cases. Not every drama can be avoided in advance. Just make sure that we don't intentionally create and keep dramas alive.

same. this could have been fixed silently for it was an unintentional mishap, instead he decided to make a big political point out of it, mailing everyone and consuming a big chunk of brain space out of the whole project for some days, then feeding the internet hate machine with this blog post.

in some ways, he's the one who brought the sexist tone to the whole conversation.

> our accounts had been banned and locked

also it irks me the wording, as there's a difference between "leaving" and being shown the door

That's a good point, yes.

The author could have sent a patch renaming the variable with commit message "oh come on" or "let's be profesional" and it would have probably worked, but instead he wanted to be a hero fighting against (probably not real) sexism.

It seems R foundation has no need for people who want to fell like a hero.