What's to stop another maintainer from actively dismissing[1] your requested change and merging anyways, and how is this scenario materially different than the same maintainer consciously disrespecting my unresolved thread while overriding my required approval?

Even more adversarial, why not just exploit the implied race condition of your process by having a new PR submitted for another maintainer to merge before you get a chance to block it?

If we're still in fact talking about a scenario involving a group of maintainers with equal authority over a protected branch, all I see is the inescapably human dilemma of collaborative communication and network of trust.

But if one "maintainer" has the asymmetric capacity to immutably block all others, then the goalposts have moved and we're not really talking about just maintainers with equal pull.

On an opinionated note, if there's anything I learned about embracing Microsoft, it's that you can't judge true TCO by merely comparing superficial sticker prices.

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-...