So are you saying that now was not the time for a major release? Or are you saying that the major release had too many breaking changes?
Not saying every project can do it, but some of these ESLint changes seem rather unnecessary.
React always adds warnings in 1 major release and then removes in the following major release, meaning if you have no warnings you can just upgrade without fear, which is quite a nice way of doing it.
I agree that the way React does things is preferable.