Comment by teddyh

I think I understand you completely, but I also think I know why you were downvoted. The problem is the implied promise of having a software project page on something like GitHub with descriptions, documentation, etc. This, in my mind, and probably yours too, implies a promise of future development, maintenance or at least security bug fixes. When such things are not forthcoming in a manner one might reasonably expect, we feel as though we have been cheated out of something we (rightly or wrongly) feel was promised to us.

Maybe what would be useful would be some standard (and required!) marking for all software projects on what the current level of maintenance is. Is it

Level 0. I wrote this in an afternoon and have no plans to ever look at it again — use at your own risk.

all through

Level X. This project is under active development and also has maintainers for a stable branch, which also receives security bug fixes in a timely manner.

In short, what I think is actually irresponsible is for projects to look like they are close to level X but then have maintainers behave like they are at a much lower level, and who think that any level of behavior is OK since they don't get paid and haven't personally promised anything. It would be better for all involved if the expected (approximate, of course) level of maintenance could be explicitly announced – this might make it clear to users what level they can expect, and make it clear to maintainers what level of involvment is expected of them to be able to call themselves “maintainers”.