Contributor Poker and Zig's AI Ban
Contributing to an open source project is an iterated game and the majority of the value that a contributor can bring to a project lies in the later iterations. In other words, you initially invest some energy (i.e. place a bet) to onboard a new contributor, and you hope that later on that relationship starts paying you back as the contributor becomes more trusted and prolific.
The reason I call it “contributor poker” is because, just like people say about the actual card game, “you play the person, not the cards”. In contributor poker, you bet on the contributor, not on the contents of their first PR.
Having an explicit understanding of this dynamic has netted the Zig project a huge amount of value over time. Building a compiler toolchain from the ground up is a huge scope that would have been impossible to cover without significant help from contributors.