The maintainer jackton1's response to this is extremely shady. He tries to prove his innocence by showing that renovate bot changed the author of the malicious commit but I'm betting he's behind the whole thing.
Why are boomers so stubborn and adamant about things they form opinions of and won't change their mind, even when they're wrong? Is it a lack of intelligence? Or too much pride? Both?
You're comparing ancient obsolete technology to a streamlined instant messaging client. There's a reason they 'just' use Discord. So now you want developers to have to check emails, IRC, forum posts, whatever other outdated communication platform, AND Discord? Why on Earth would they use all that when Discord takes care of all of those features and more.
Having more than one central place to communicate is 'hostile'.