Another possibility is that the developer is using this as a convenient excuse to abandon a project where they bit off more than they could chew. $28K isn't a lot of money having already put in months of work and with potentially many months of work remaining.

The acid test will be if someone fixes their issue and says "Here you go, it's compiling again. Now just make sure you handle dependencies like this to keep everything working." Will the project be picked up again?