Quitting research halfway -- how unprofessional/irresponsible?
From a mathematician's point of view (I think the situation is fairly similar in CS): It should suffice to leave your research in a state where others can pick it up. For example:


Any preprints that are sufficiently presentable (if not necessarily polished enough for a referee's tastes) can be posted on a preprint repository, if necessary with comments about what parts need changes. If a refereeing process is already underway, and if you really want it out of your eyes, you can ask your coauthors or perhaps even other colleagues familiar with the project to take over the necessary correspondence and editing (although the latter arrangement is unusual). Otherwise, I suggest that you handle communication with referees for all papers you have already submitted.
Any work that hasn't progressed far enough to have presentable results can be handed over to some academics you trust, with explicit guidance as to what can be done with it (e.g., can they assign it to students? finish it on their own? send it to others?) and what sort of attribution you expect (e.g., coauthorship or acknowledgments).


People won't mind you stopping to do research (at least not in math and CS; it's different in other disciplines where you have labs and collaborators heavily relying on one another); but they will mind if you leave a mess of unfinished work behind that they can neither use nor redo, like leaving your clothes in a shared dryer for hours.