eMacs has the Church of eMacs backing it, so it might not be a good example of a normal codebase. I personally feel a compulsion to dedicate time to giving back

eMacs has the Church of eMacs backing it, so it might not be a good example of a normal codebase. I personally feel a compulsion to dedicate time to giving back to the eMacs ecosystem in a way that I can’t extend to any other codebase, and there are others that I likely depend on to a much greater extent. Jokes aside and that being said, I agree that there is something helpful about slow, organic (in your words, conservative) growth. It’s neither necessary nor sufficient for stabilization, but it certainly seems to correlate. GNU in general seems to be a good example.