[azangru]

> In which case all of your effort was for nothing.

I thought people maintain open-source projects if they use them themselves. In which case, all your effort was for solving particular use cases that you had.

When developers have no further use for a project (e.g. when they've moved on to a different technology), then the project will likely die. I haven't seen many people keep maintaining a project after they've stopped using it.

[rleigh]

You can stop using the tool yourself, but still have a large active userbase depending upon it. As a result, you can still end up with an unwritten obligation to support that userbase.