It's a subforum which requires a special access privilege. Back in the days of the "Plugin Developer"-tag, plugin authors automatically gained access to this subforum. Today, a member can nominate another member to be invited to the forum. Other users can vote on this nomination. After one week, the staff decides if the member will be invited based on the votes.
We just create a nomination thread, the person is discussed, and then you are either in or out depending on how good for the community you are I would probably never be nominated now, I'm just an old member that has been here since the inception when we got Bukkit+ for being a developer
