If you use a product and never caught a bug there then it might be that you don't need new version of the product?
In other case you'll be looking to fix that bug / contact product owner and you will eventually know if its abandoned / needs maintainer.
Was it something you were interested in? Replaced an alternate you were working on?
I find it hard to believe that a project you didn't create became something you actively wanted to support. On top of that, if the old maintainer really walked away completely, and they don't answer questions, you're walking through the dark.
The project I'm talking about is Postgres.app. It's a GUI wrapper around a PostgreSQL server, so there wasn't a lot of code; maintaining it mainly means I need to make new binaries several times a year. I didn't need a lot of help from the previous maintainer. (But I have rewritten most of the code since I started maintaining it)
It just was a great fit; I work on a PostgreSQL client; so it seemed like a good idea to help people get a server running too.
Late reply (this has dropped to pg 6), but here's to you . Our team uses postgres.app, and I know of a number of others who do too.
From my standpoint, it is shocking that such a popular and great gateway into the PG world is in this situation. Complex, enterprisey software is now just drag-n-drop and develop. Postgres.app is really good stuff.
You don't have a donate link, but if you're selling your front-end, please promote it.