"the people behind the software might have some emotional investment in their work."
If you are coding to relieve an unresolved emotional tension that just has no other outlet instead of solving an actual problem, you are in the wrong industry. Go be the first Jackson Pollock programmer.
It is fundamentally impossible to provide enough evidence or preemptive apologies to find redemption once someone starts playing the Identity Victim card. Don't even bother.
1.) Open Source is a meritocracy intentionally designed to counter the never-ending threat of software homogenization that profit motives lure us into embracing, not a soapbox for fleeting quandaries about morality and "social change" (whatever the hell that means for the week). Apples and oranges. Mountains and molehills.
2.) Open Source is not some cool kid's club where people who understand what a semi-colon can do try their hand at avoiding the recession. Even if coders did not make the money they make, THEY WOULD STILL BE CODING BECAUSE IT'S ABOUT TRICKING FUNDAMENTAL PARTICLES INTO DOING MATH FOR YOU. IT'S FUCKING AWESOME SO PUT UP OR SHUT UP.
3.) You code... you put it out there... and you have, literally, -ZERO- idea what is going to happen. People might like it, people might hate it.
Now this is the important part to my final point:
---IT IS NOT YOUR PLACE TO CONTROL OR FILTER THOSE RESPONSES---
So you throw some code out there and people don't like it? You get mocked by some asshole? And? What, did you expect civility and ponies and rainbows? What fantasy model of human interaction are you relying on as the core of such assumptions?
Nay, sentient being. It is your place to ADAPT to those responses.
So... in short....
There is a BLAME option in version control, so point out the flaws in her code or shut up. So there's that.
Now as per the frothy mob trying to turn Open Source into some anti-bullying kumbaya because they watch too much Rachel Maddow...
There is -not- a SHAME option in version control, so either understand what problem Open Source is trying to solve (promoting software heterogeneity) or go back to the service sector where people are forced to be nice.
"---IT IS NOT YOUR PLACE TO CONTROL OR FILTER THOSE RESPONSES---"
One could equally well argue that it's not your place to control or filter criticisms of those responses. You're essentially positing that the majority of people here are out of line for saying "don't be a dick". That seems contradictory to me.
Childish usage of a primitive understanding of dialectics isn't going to deter me. You'll have to do better than that.
This is me ADAPTING to your response. Not filtering it out. Not telling you to never again say those big, mean, nasty words to me. Not running the internet to summon white knights to my ever beck and call because I want to win some points that don't matter anywhere.
This is me, leading by example, how to ADAPT to your response.
If you are coding to relieve an unresolved emotional tension that just has no other outlet instead of solving an actual problem, you are in the wrong industry. Go be the first Jackson Pollock programmer.