Hi,
When we agree to allow someone to merge something into the tree, especially a significant piece of code like batman-adv, there are some impressions we want to have beforehand.
And one such impression we want is that there is going to be someone continuing to be active maintaing the code upstream, even after the code is merged.
Otherwise we get "merge and run" scenerios. As networking maintainer, I've been burnt by this several times.
If you're the only person who had the energy and motivation to do the merges of this code, then you're only person we know that can keep up with the expectations we had when we agreed to merge the code.
If you step down, that trust has been broken, and we're left with a rotting pile of poo in the tree because it's unlikely anyone else is going to step up and keep things maintained upstream as you did.
believing that the batman-adv code base will not be kept in sync anymore is a bit premature at this point. David, you may not know this but the first person to handle the "upstream job" was Andrew Lunn. At a certain point he stepped down and Sven took over. Now, Sven decided to focus on other things and I am certain somebody else will take the job. If no one else volunteers I'll fill the gap.
Taking over Sven's position won't be easy as he did a very good job and passes on high expectations. Sven, thanks a lot for all your time and effort on this matter!
David, I hope you can excuse the bumpy way in which this fell onto you. A smooth transition would certainly have been better. We will try to work on that part in the future.
Regards, Marek