IMO it's antisocial behavior on the project for dictating how people are allowed to interact with it. Sure GNU is in the rights to only accept email patches to closed maintainers.

The end result -- people using AI will gatekeep you right back, and your complaints lose your moral authority when they fork matplotlib.

Sure, let them fork it, and stop using it for renown points.

They can go ahead and fork it all they want, I'm sticking with the original.