Say there was this nice GUI that built and setup lot's of projects for you. Who's responsibility is it to make sure that everything it supports stays supported?
After years of that, "sudo apt-get install" was like a breath of fresh air.
Things change. It's a balance between the pay off and the ongoing investment to maintain the automation.
For long established, regularly used tools, there is a case for funding this activity somehow.
For the many specialized tools? I'm not sure how this would actually happen, unless the person who creates it decides to maintain it. When their career focus doesn't value that tool, we can't really expect anything.
Worse, let's say some established systems exist. They have a barrier to entry in that new software needs to be compliant and potentially integrated on some level. People already are focused away from this stuff. Raising that bar means fewer overall contributions.
Now, it's often: I wrote this. It's open. You can use it.
And they move on.
If, suddenly, I wrote this, and it's open gets followed up by, "you need to make sure this works with all this other stuff..." what happens?
A lot of research type tools get written and then left laying a out. Just testing and packaging, integrating, etc... would be a considerable project.
Could be the basis of some sort of course or career though. I'm thinking of the sysadmin types who manage software and research teams outside academia. The really good ones I know used to hold a position, or have some personal interest sufficient to make these sorts of activities make sense.
in general, it's a great productivity booster across the board to have a team doing this; the main problem is getting buy-in from orgs, because the time and effort wasted when you don't have one are so pervasive as to be largely invisible.