To read this charitably, interpret that statement not to mean that kubernetes-the-software itself is the best gift to OSS collaboration ever, but rather that Kubernetes-the-project "brought open-source collaboration to a new level" in the context of working on kubernetes-the-software. I think that makes more sense, and certainly isn't as pompous.
OpenStack had similar levels of contribution at its peak and had much of the same solutions. I'm just guessing the author is newer to the game so might have missed out on 2010-2013 in the infrastructure space.
One of the cool things to come out of it was Zuul, which is a merge queue system similar to Bors and friends.
