It turns out that maintaining a package is a lot of work, and the career benefit post-publishing said package and accompanying paper is really low. - writing g

It turns out that maintaining a package is a lot of work, and the career benefit post-publishing said package and accompanying paper is really low. - writing general purpose software that works on multiple platforms and is bug free is really really hard. So you're just going to be inundated with complaints that it doesn't work on X - maintaining software is lots of work. Dependencies change, etc. - supporting and helping an endless number of noobs use your software is a major pita. "I don't know why it wouldn't compile on your system. Leave me alone." - "oh that was just my grad work" - its hard to get money to pay for developing it further. great when that happens though.