I doubt I am going to pass it on to someone else as long as I am an end user of the framework. You get a great free framework and I get a framework that works exactly the way I want it to with the ability to jump into the code at any time and make adjustments that improve it for me. That's the open source deal.
He can totally find another maintainer, or a group of maintainers that would do a great job. Kind of selfish of him to hang onto it, tbh.