Nobody is making excuses for shitty behavior, they're saying that if you interact with enough people you'll encounter shitty behavior because there are shitty people in the world. When you go outside just be ready to carry on with your life when you encounter one of these.

Statistically speaking, the likelihood that there's an asshole somewhere that you'll run into in the course of your lifetime is near 100%, so it is some natural law like gravity. Do you have a proposal for a solution to this problem, or are you just calling people victim blamers for acknowledging that these people exist?

> What do those sentences mean, if not suggesting that the maintainer is the one who made the wrong decision (by taking offense to the email)?

They mean that I don't see really any value in your framework of 'fault' vs not. We are still left with the question of 'what do you do'.

For a project of this magnitude, I don't think the maintainer made the wrong decision. But just because someone else is at fault does not mean that every decision by the other party in response is a good one.

It is not an excuse.

The maintainer can decide what to do about it. Whether or not that is the wrong decision is a different issue. (Anyways, there are many other reasons why it might not be maintained, than only due to receiving such a email message; e.g. because you are injured or because you have other work to do (which is what is mentioned in the README.md file anyways), or whatever other reason that maybe other people don't necessarily know.)

Nevertheless, some people who will maintain the project (not necessarily this one, and not necessarily) should do so even if people send such bad messages. That does not mean that everyone will; what they decide to do about messages they receive is their own choice. This is why FOSS is important; you can fork the project and make your own modifications, if you disagree with the maintainer.