[watermoose]

> For smaller projects out on GitHub I often see attempts at this that fail. Stuck in "Open" status for years or outright rejected.

This is why you fork.

Some forks even merge branches that were PR'd to the original fork and just start managing their own.

This is why GitHub has a "network" graph where you can see the other forks on the timeline and can choose a newer fork if an older one has either been abandoned or is not being upkept or doesn't work with some newer version of X that you need it to work with.