Open source, mostly defined by the right to fork, is a prerequisite for the survival of abandoned projects. You can say that abandoned open-source projects don't necessarily survive, but for proprietary projects abandonment is a guaranteed death sentence.
I've also started to resent the word "hacker", because it sounds as some kind of social class made up of special snowflakes. If the project has value and users, then interested programmers will find a way to keep the project going and there are hundreds of projects in the Linux ecosystem that survive because of volunteers or companies scratching an itch. If there isn't interest, then surely the project might as well die. But that's a tautology.
I've also started to resent the word "hacker", because it sounds as some kind of social class made up of special snowflakes. If the project has value and users, then interested programmers will find a way to keep the project going and there are hundreds of projects in the Linux ecosystem that survive because of volunteers or companies scratching an itch. If there isn't interest, then surely the project might as well die. But that's a tautology.