Any of them ran their own startups? Ported some code to jemalloc?

Then I am not interested in their idea on tech.

Wow, there you go. This is quite the straightforwardly authoritarian statement, if followed through on (though I doubt you actually follow it through).

If some politicians and engineers wanted to lay train tracks down straight through the middle of a town, would the locals have a say in the matter, in your opinion? Or should they leave those decisions to the experts?

I do imagine you're not really serious though. To illustrate that - let's imagine for the sake of argument that Julian Assange (or Richard Stallman, or Kent Pitman, or whoever whose political opinions you might dislike) would code rings around you.

Would you suddenly take their opinion seriously? You wouldn't, if you didn't like them or their opinions. You'd come up with some other ad hoc reason why they could (and must!) be totally ignored. I mean, please correct me if I'm wrong here.

So why maintain the pretense that you're rejecting these people because they're not a part of the coding tribe, of which you're such a proud member and staunch representative?