it's utterly ridiculous and has all the indications of a maintainer who was grumpy about making a change (a place I know *very well*, I am there multiple times a week myself), and now as it's gone on for years, they no longer can really back down from their original "complaints" even though they are absurd at this point.
The good news is some maintainers can have a change of heart. I seem to remember there being a certain someone who thought asyncio python was pointless, but now SQLAlchemy has asyncio support and that's super cool!
haha that's because i figured out a cool way to do it that wouldnt ruin my life.
pyproject thing, he just doesn't want to "give in", there's zero technical issue