If he wanted to quit, that's his right, of course. But at least give people a day's notice before he nukes everything, right?
"The fact that you would care more about his shepherding of repositories"
Care more about them than what? What else is there? I don't know what's going on. The repos were his work, they're all I know of him.
You seem to detect this entitled, callous attitude in my words but I assure you it's a false positive. I have, or had, nothing but positive feelings for the guy. Never met him, spoken to him, or anything else really. But I have relied on his code, and in my book, when you release open source code there's a kind of implied promise that you don't suddenly delete the master repo in a fit of internet pique.
if that's "the kind of attitudes that probably helped to drive him offline in the first place" then .. maybe he should be offline because I think it's pretty reasonable.