They enjoy it.
They need to for their own needs.
It provides them with some other benefit.
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.