The actual thread shows the maintainer implementing the fix in a way he found better and prepping to do the backports for other stable kernels. The actual response was "Thanks for your patch, but I wanted to fix it differently" and gives him credit for reporting.

The suggestion that the maintainer "pulled" something here is quite something. Is there any evidence that the author ever tried to ask for more credit aside from carping about it on their blog in public?

If there was evidence that they'd gone to the maintainer and said "um, hey, I feel like I should get more credit than that" I might feel more sympathetic. As it is, they misrepresented the words of the maintainer and played the victim. If there's evidence they have tried to correct this on list then I might feel differently.