The original reason may not be invalidated.
But as a continuous activity, over years, what exactly is in it for maintainers to get up in the morning and trade their remaining lease on life for value to be consumed by rich leeches?
But as a continuous activity, over years, what exactly is in it for maintainers to get up in the morning and trade their remaining lease on life for value to be consumed by rich leeches?
The fact that you consider users to be “leeches” means you’re missing the point of open source.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leech_(computing)
Contributors are not leeching the work.
Users who don't contribute are though, especially when they suck down developer time with issues.
You're not in a position to judge my understanding of FOSS because the word 'leech' makes you uncomfortable.
They need to for their own needs.
It provides them with some other benefit.
Myth of the rational maintainer, if you will.
In real life, people get (mentally) stuck into suboptimal situations where leaving would make them happier all the friggin' time.
Bad jobs they should have quit. Bad partners they should have broken up with.
Why not bad open-source projects they should have stopped maintaining?
What's so wrong with this line of thinking?
What was enjoyable, becomes grunt work, like making the full set of unit tests for features users want, but you don't actually use yourself.
Whatever this handwavy 'other benefit' was, stops being beneficial.
But they're still paying the opportunity cost, sitting down as the older, greyer, burnt out maintainer while others get the benefit from their work.