I think it’s less a change in sentiment and more if they’ve driven away all but the “true believers”. I know the sub I modded lost almost all their long time active mods and are down to the bottom of barrel with a few exceptions (whom all don’t seem long for the sub either at least at the time of my exit).
It’s awesome to see these projects are still alive and kicking but they feel like a relic of a past era nowadays. Much like how stock ROMs on Android have improved to the point that rooting isn’t really beneficial in most cases anymore, the stock firmware on the majority of routers is perfectly serviceable. I’m sure there are still some corner cases where they are as transformative as ever though.