[xg15]

I think this is part of the mindset the OP is criticizing.

Following that logic, a software cannot possibly be completed - It can be either in development or dead. Which would mean you either have a budget of time, money and resources for constant maintenance of your software - or you might not write that software at all. Repeat that for every new piece of software you want to write.

The problem is that this is impossible to do for hobbyist authors, so we would lose a large amount of free or open-source software currently available.

[PatchMonkey]

Did you realize that Torvalds did not have anything to do with Linux 2.6.32.70?

He offloaded the whole project onto another team (who mostly backported fixes) that kept it going until early 2016. The rest of us were already in Linux 4.X territory by then.

If you cant maintain it, you can pay someone.

Or, thanks to Github, lets talk about letting the code-literate userbase sort it out themselves. Assuming they care enough.

Or, we could pivot this discussion to the "evils of Capitalism" and whatnot since that userbase probably needs to eat.

[xg15]

This assumes there is a team or a "code-literate userbase" and you trust them enough not to do bad things with your software (e.g. add adverts, tracking, backdoors or miners)

> Or, we could pivot this discussion to the "evils of Capitalism" and whatnot since that userbase probably needs to eat.

Or we could try to back and accept that software could also simply be a tool and doesn't have to be an enterprise.