A number of them have written about their reasons- I can’t speak for the maintainer this article is about but the general sentiment I’ve seen from the ones I’ve been hearing about is that the culture around kernel development is dogwater. Lots of it surrounding refusal to make any space for R4L and shitting on devs working on it, but then also spinning out of that are maintainers likening their quality control responsibilities to being “the thin blue line”.

Wow that ‘etc’ is doing a ton of legwork

Man too bad all I’ve got to eat is this cyanide. Those cookies over there? Don’t you know how unhealthy those are?

That’s just when they let the mask slip. It’s not like they were saints up til that point.

Something something all you have is a hammer

I think those are called hands