I think ultimately a lot of that maintainer-consternation is a failure to 1) decide if the project is a 'project' which is meant to be built and maintained by p

I think ultimately a lot of that maintainer-consternation is a failure to 1) decide if the project is a 'project' which is meant to be built and maintained by people over time or 2) a source-available reference for others which is actually just meant for personal use. They want the PR and cred of having a popular open-source thing, but dont actually do anything other than putting the source online in terms of fostering it. I understand this, and I too put my stuff online a lot of times just to build up my street cred, but if thats the only purpose then you need to make that clear in your communication and how you manage the project. If you _are_ intending the thing to grow and be used you need to do that intentionally. The two biggest offenders for that tend to be 1) not moving to an organization account and 2) not fostering contributors to lessen the individual load. Again, because the project is actually a personal project not intended to be touched by others (but hey if you would use it and star it that would be great because then its even better PR for me!). So yes, I understand its a tough spot but in many ways I view it as self-inflicted and think communication (both explicit and implicit) goes a long, _long_ way toward setting expectations.