I think you have a wrong definition of entitled. You're never entitled to make contributions to any open source project. Any such project may or may not give you that right, but it's not something you're entitled, it's explicitly given to you.
I agree with this but I don't really blame people for assuming they have the right to contribute code anyway. There are developers out there who directly challenge others to contribute when they say things like "patches welcome" in response to feature requests or bug reports. Now people aren't entitled to contribute? Makes no sense to me to be honest.
Only thing worse than submitting a patch and being ignored is watching someone else commit the feature or fix in spite of the contribution.
> having a right to certain benefits or privileges
The right to contribute is a property of the project, not a property of open source, which has nothing to say on how projects are run. And for the record, I don't agree with his project management style.
> not a property of open source, which has nothing to say on how projects are run
If open source does not require that a project accept external contributions, then Hickey is right to say that you are not entitled to contribute just by virtue of being open source.
You're right that this is a more to do with the project in question than whether it's open source, but open source does compel projects to do other things. So it is not weird for Rich to clarify for users of his open source project that its being open source doesn't compel that project to accept external contributions, in the way that being open source compels them to distribute the software.
