> It's also a huge problem if the maintainer leaves because typically those small systems are owned by an individual dev who set it up in the first place. It's

> It's also a huge problem if the maintainer leaves because typically those small systems are owned by an individual dev who set it up in the first place. It's not uncommon that this maintainer actually wants to get away from maintaining this code, and would actually be quite willing to teach some successor how everything works. The problem is that it is often hard to find someone who is similarly passionate about this system (often the system only keeps working because the original maintainer invests a lot of energy into keeping it alive), and is thus brutally willing to learn this system inside out. You can't force this mentality from above: either a suitable programmer has this mentality or he is typically not suitable.