That's a particularly sniffy approach to FOSS. FOSS is great. A lot of people have contributed a lot of value to society through making code they wrote freely

That's a particularly sniffy approach to FOSS. FOSS is great. A lot of people have contributed a lot of value to society through making code they wrote freely available. The world is a better place for it, and I appreciate their efforts when something they've made helps me. None of that means it's a smart decision to build something important on a foundation that is likely to shift under you later. If people don't contribute to the things they are dependent on, there is no reason to expect them to still be around when they do want more from them. If you're relying on something where the developers' incentives are primarily about personal satisfaction and it's only a small team or solo developer then you have little reason to assume they will still be around anyway. Unless some software has become big enough to be an established community project or someone is developing it professionally, relying on it as a long-term dependency might be unwise. More specifically, either it already does what you need (or you're confident you can patch it to do so yourself), or it might need ongoing development but you have confidence in the support/maintenance model behind it, or you're taking a risk by relying on it.