The floppy disk drivers were no longer being maintained. They were orphaning the drivers and they would eventually rot as the rest of the kernel changed around it. Then someone else stepped up to take the position of maintaining the driver.
It's significant because a) some dude out there still has working floppy disk drives and feels that they might still be used, and b) this basically proves that Linux has the best legacy device support.
If they didn't maintain this you would be stuck keeping an old computer alive that had a floppy drive and a CD burner, to burn any data you needed to a CD, then another old computer that has a CD drive and a USB port to move the data off a CD (/s, but only kinda).
It's significant because a) some dude out there still has working floppy disk drives and feels that they might still be used, and b) this basically proves that Linux has the best legacy device support.
If they didn't maintain this you would be stuck keeping an old computer alive that had a floppy drive and a CD burner, to burn any data you needed to a CD, then another old computer that has a CD drive and a USB port to move the data off a CD (/s, but only kinda).