I think that if you're an unpaid open source developer, then if you no longer want to maintain your project, donating it to something like CNCF might feel like better stewardship than nothing at all, and donating it to "the community" is ambiguous. I can see how one would want their project to do right by its users, but due to bus factors and so on, one person might need to step away indefinitely at little notice. As someone can accidentally find themselves steering an open source project that becomes larger than they ever intended, so too can someone accidentally become their own boss, which was kind of what my analogy was getting at, that it can be thankless work, and that there are likely good reasons that people donate their projects to groups like CNCF or others.
A lot of open source software is developed by people employed by large tech companies, so that complicates ownership structures. I can see companies may view projects that are led by nonprofit orgs, trusts, or other durable formations of collaborators as more stable than those led by individuals or small groups, but perhaps they prefer these structures because they are easier to exert control over by those groups seeking to do so, like CNCF may be doing in the case of OP?
I think that if you're an unpaid open source developer, then if you no longer want to maintain your project, donating it to something like CNCF might feel like better stewardship than nothing at all, and donating it to "the community" is ambiguous. I can see how one would want their project to do right by its users, but due to bus factors and so on, one person might need to step away indefinitely at little notice. As someone can accidentally find themselves steering an open source project that becomes larger than they ever intended, so too can someone accidentally become their own boss, which was kind of what my analogy was getting at, that it can be thankless work, and that there are likely good reasons that people donate their projects to groups like CNCF or others.
A lot of open source software is developed by people employed by large tech companies, so that complicates ownership structures. I can see companies may view projects that are led by nonprofit orgs, trusts, or other durable formations of collaborators as more stable than those led by individuals or small groups, but perhaps they prefer these structures because they are easier to exert control over by those groups seeking to do so, like CNCF may be doing in the case of OP?