I suspect it's because he's so successful at spawning developer communities around the software he writes. Just look at sway: between 1.0 and 1.1 he was nowhere

I suspect it's because he's so successful at spawning developer communities around the software he writes. Just look at sway: between 1.0 and 1.1 he was nowhere near the largest contributor. I'd guess that means a lot of time to work on other projects.