[honzzz]

>> there's a massive personal value to having a library used by large numbers of people.

I have no experience with this - would you kindly explain that value? I am guessing that it has something to do with personal brand (my library is popular => I am good at this, hire me) - am I on the right track? Is there more?

(edited grammar)

[mmastrac]

That's exactly it. As someone else in this comment section described, there's "clout" from being the maintainer of a popular library and this particular action could be seen as "clout-chasing".

It's terrible that clout is such a thing in open-source, but there are complex incentive issues that led to this point.