[dj-wonk]

I see the points you are making.

Here's another way to look at it. If you care about an open source project, you don't want it to fail if you get run over or pulled away from it.

[terminado]

Actually, that depends on the original motivations of the project. As a developer, I'll frequently code up something that amounts to a small "project" with the potential for re-use, and I might release the source of the program, because why not?

Whether it becomes popular, or achieves continuity isn't really a motive of that sort of stand-alone utility project. On the other hand, a number of wildly popular open source software projects have started out that way, as small, independent side-projects.