People do that because they’re selfish. That’s not a dig, it’s a truth. Pure altruism does not exist. Even when you do something good nobody sees you do and knowing you’ll get no recognition for you’re doing it because it makes you feel good. To varying degrees you can come close to true altruism as that example does but it’s unattainable. In this case the maintainer lost that feel good feedback from recognition and decided rather than fixing the error it felt better to be more selfish.

tl;dr: people suck