[unknownOrigin]

Designing for minimum maintenance is nice when you're working on something for "yourself"... not so much if you're creating something for someone else. Since designing for minimum maintenance takes additional time (and money) and most stakeholding entities (contractee, employer) will want the job to be done as soon as possible (and only THEN worry about upkeep), this can easily prevent you from "doing the right thing" simply by the nature of competition. Not to mention the elephant in the room - that minimum maintenance often means less money for the person doing the maintenance, i.e. "you". Vendor lockin is an issue only if you're not the vendor.