based on what you've wrote:

Do people want him in a leadership role? Probably not (a no from me).

Do people trust his work in regards to security? Probably not (a no from me).

So why are people installing Bitcoin Knots and the number of them are increasing? I'd imagine it's a very simple answer: because most people are signaling that they don't want the op_return increase change, and if they have to install knots to signal that, even if most people read that post about the current leadership and maintainer of it, and have the opinion that knots maintainer is bad and they'd try to stay away from him, they'd still install knots, not because of knots, but simply because they don't agree with that single change coming in Bitcoin Core 30, let alone dealing with inscriptions.

I'd imagine people would say, as a response to not use knots, is "if you don't want us to use knots, or whatever other similar node, and not continue advocating for it and increase the conversions to it, then don't move forward with this change, and never do unless there's a really good reason, which is doubtful".

That's how I see things, and I'd imagine most on the non-core side with this upcoming update, from what I understood in all of this.