Land-grabbing the Noosphere

Abandoned projects are land-grabs that hurt everybody.

Open source is a reputation economy. People don't write OSS for the sake of it - they want it to be used and renown. Existing libraries put people off writing new solutions to a problem as they decrease new libraries' chances of gaining users, & their potential rewards.

So if you abandon a project you've reduced the future quality of an ecosystem.

If you love it, let go

If you have a project you're no longer interested in, find a new maintainer or shut it down. Make this clear on the README, and point people towards the new project(s).

Shutting down abandoned projects is a guaranteed net positive to an ecosystem: you're not working on it anyway, and you might spark new initiatives.

If you care about other people, kill your zombie projects!