It was a different time. The people writing these things were more nerdy and more mature. The social internet hadn't taken over. People weren't concerned with v

It was a different time. The people writing these things were more nerdy and more mature. The social internet hadn't taken over. People weren't concerned with votes, stars, comments, likes, splashiness, attention, or trading funny pictures of cats. You could take your time to write something considered just because you needed to get the information down. Software projects were idealistic because most software out there was proprietary and expensive; paid software was an entrepreneurial risk, and free software was transgressive. If a culture is popular, it tends to saturate. The old internet simply couldn't compete with the new one.