Author of a project with > 5k stars here[0]. I honestly haven't had any experience with mean people for the nearly 10 years since I started it. I've had maybe one or two pushy people, but it was mostly justified (I hadn't pushed a release in like 3 years). They were pushing me to find a maintainer if I wasn't going to answer some of the open requests.

0. https://github.com/amoffat/sh