Maybe, and emphasizing **maybe**, he is trying to repeat the effect LWN.net made to its course in its history. I think it is a wake-up call worth repeating, if you are honest to your audience in your intentions AND your audience/users want to show your work is valued AND you are honestly willing to let your audience influence your work also by means you may not have to think about or you may not be willing to set at first.
That is three conditions to fill and there exists those very unmeasurable things called "honest intent" and "interaction with audience/users", what can collapse the whole thing very easily, IMHO. I don't really have any clue, what is the real situation with AV Linux and its creator/maintainer, just depicting my thoughts to the first comment.