> significant anti-human friction

Yes, that friction is intentional. The lazy people don't want to do it? Great, there is very little chance their contributions are worthwhile. The privacy conscious people won't do it? Then let them work on their own repositories and complain loudly about the idiot maintainer who puts these insane barriers. Then the maintainer can go take a look at that forks done by the loud complainers and see if it is worth to whitelist them.

> it's why products/services that offer free trials or a free tier tend to be overwhelmingly more successful

Drug dealers also offer the first hit for free, why don't you use that as an example as well? ;)

To answer this properly in case the quip was too vague: there is no reason for "number of PRs opened by new contributors" to be a viable/interesting KPI for any FOSS project.

> I'll take the captcha, thanks.

First you need to show me all your cool FOSS projects.