It's still effort. If you have someone shitting up your PRs with personal complaints you can either put the effort in to squelch the opponent or you can just walk away. For unpaid FOSS work there is often very little to be gained except for a bit of self satisfaction and kudos from the community.

It's easy to walk away from an ungrateful community if you don't have gold in your pockets to soften the blows.

It's easier to walk away sometimes, it takes more effort, more mental energy, more stress to deal with things.

Based on the thread, they were doxxed by that troll.

Defamation lawsuit sounds like a perfectly valid avenue if that is the case.

Lawyers take effort, time, and difficulty.

It's much easier to shut down a project instead.

Alternatively, people can instead choose to NOT be dicks to people who are altruistically developing stuff for no compensation and the net benefit of our industry.

I suspect the person who did this to the maintainer is probably mentally unwell. They likely do this to other people.