The larger pity, to me, seems to be the maintainer's decision to not only quit the project, but to take down the repo with the intent to delete it:

https://github.com/actix/actix-web

I get it, they feel personally harassed and slighted. And it's their project, they can do with it what they like. But it still feels like the decision is motivated more by spite than by a desire to simply wash one's hand of the project. Surely there are not hostile developers who would've been willing to take over the maintainer role.