I have several times submitted pull requests to projects only to find out the hard way that the project was abandoned by its maintainer. So I strongly disagree

I have several times submitted pull requests to projects only to find out the hard way that the project was abandoned by its maintainer. So I strongly disagree with minimaxir. It's not rude to ask whether a project has been abandoned. It takes literally seconds to answer yes or no and only a few extra seconds to clarify the situation. No one expects anyone to indefinitely maintain any code. But please be upfront about it. It is not burdensome to write in capital letters THIS PROJECT IS UNMAINTAINED in the README file if that is the case. And it saves a lot of time for others.