Yeah, that's fair, there are driven people, and people who are pushing for something, right, but in this case, look at the language used:

Progress will not happen until there is new maintainer. XZ for C has sparse commit log too. Dennis you are better off waiting until new maintainer happens or fork yourself. Submitting patches here has no purpose these days. The current maintainer lost interest or doesn't care to maintain anymore. It is sad to see for a repo like this. [src]

Tons of emotional button-pushing and pressure, but not on technical grounds. Just trying to make the dev feel crappy about themselves.