Tbf most projects are especially gatekeepy..... they've been even before AI came onto the scene. All what changed is making changes easier (slop it out instead of the classic one-line readme edit) and making it easier to fork projects.

Traditionally you've opened to a PR only to get closed for a style/procedural issue or get ghosted. You often didn't fork because maintenance is a hassle. Less so with LLMs, you know?

Nowadays you can just implement your change and vibe-fork it...