Stuff pretty rarely gets escalated to that point, sure. I mean, the position exists for cases when normal means of resolving code ownership disagreements totally fail.
Maybe that's just obvious if you're familiar with the governance structure of the Mozilla Project but not clear to people who haven't been involved in it...
I'm familiar with the governance structure of Mozilla. I'm not a distinguished engineer or anything, but familiar enough. There are employees parroting that Brendan is still has an important position in the structure. Brendan's comment implies he does not consider that the case.
I wasn't trying to imply that you're personally not familiar with the governance structure. I can see how what I said could be read that way, and I apologize for that. It was meant as more of a general statement...
In any case I've seen one technical issue escalated to Brendan so far since he resigned, after mailing list wrangling back and forth for a while got nowhere. He made a call on it (a compromise of sorts, as it happens), and people abided by that call from what I can tell.
He clearly has a lot less impact on decisionmaking now than he did before, which is what you see in his comments. I can totally understand why he feels the way he does. But I think he's underselling the importance he still has.
Maybe that's just obvious if you're familiar with the governance structure of the Mozilla Project but not clear to people who haven't been involved in it...