[milesvp]

You may be missing the point if the post. Good software asymptotically aproaches bug free over time. Meaning it should require fewer and fewer updates less and less frequently. But reduced frequency of updates is percieved as death of software, and this is actually a problem. I even see it in developers who use it as a metric when choosing frameworks and libraries which is a mistake for older software.

I saw a study done on github where the author wanted to know what languages had the smallest open bug count, and found unexpectedly that c and c++, which are notoriously bug inducing languages, had some of the lowest bug rates of all the languages. His conclusion was that the low bug count was actually due to the languages being used for foudational work, libraries and drivers and such, basically reaffirming the 'many eyes make shallow bugs' adage.

The better metric for if software is no longer being maintained is how responsive is the maintainer to their mailing list/support channel. Regularly seeing requests going unanswered is also likely to show that any updates that happen are also likely ignoring actual user needs.

[kibwen]

"Many eyes make all bugs shallow" has been considered an eye-rolling phrase for years now. The reason that foundational C/C++ libs have few open bugs on Github is because they all predate Github and have their own bug trackers, and Github's issue tracker is so anemic (or, more charitably, optimized for small projects) that it offers little incentive for switching.