Or, what usually happens, is someone like me runs into the bug. I search the issues and find it closed. I consider the maintainer incompetent because the issue

Or, what usually happens, is someone like me runs into the bug. I search the issues and find it closed. I consider the maintainer incompetent because the issue was reported and either fixed, but they obviously don’t have regression testing, or the don’t care about actually fixing bugs. Either way, I will probably seek out a different project if I can. If the issue is open, even for years, that’s totally different and understandable.