Jon Masters is a kernel hacker who’s been involved with Linux for over 22 years.
"I wanted to take a moment to discuss the broader implications of the XZ attacks involving maintainer burnout. The XZ library had a single maintainer for years, one who (by their own admission) was experiencing a tough moment, causing them to feel real burnout. As a result, patches were languishing and releases were not as regularly finished.
All of a sudden, an apparent well-wisher named Jia Tan appeared and began making useful contributions. Eventually, other ‘people’ put pressure on the maintainer to accept them as a co-maintainer. So it was that this ‘actor’ was able to exploit a maintainer to gain control over a project.