A lot of these "I'm leaving, everybody, see? I'm really going now, OK. Did you hear that? I'm really leaving" posts are just a form of virtue signalling or likes-farming, viz. the flood of such posts on what used to be Twitter when Musk took over. The majority of those who claimed to leave were back within a few weeks to months to get their fix. Most of these posts are characterised by the poster not having any positive plans for the future beyond whatever they claim to leave behind, just complaints about whatever caused them to write those posts.

This post here does not seem to be like that. I suspect he's really planning on taking a hiatus from the 'net, something like a sabbatical at least. I do think he'll eventually return to the 'net in some form and he might even become active in whatever the free software world has morphed into by then but he does seem to have positive plans for the future. He's starting a magazine centred around an Orthodox Christian community, something which can provide the same type of fulfilment as working on free software projects can.

As an open source maintainer, it was important not to just drop off the planet and have people think he died or something. He's got torches to pass.