No, it's not an equal relationship. Linus and the kernel do not have a great track record on filesystems :)

XFS has been burning through maintainers, and btrfs never fully stabilized. Given that, it doesn't make sense for anyone to be trying to dictate; that's a track record that should be cause for reexamining how we do things.

Working with the kernel has been extremely disruptive to bcachefs development and the community, so as with anyone else who's being disruptive and not listening, at some point I have to say "enough is enough, you're taking up too much of my time, we can work together again when you figure some things out".

I do not strictly need bcachefs to be in the kernel. I do need a functioning release process and a stable community free of drama.