I occasionally come across GitHub repositories that haven’t been updated in months or years. A package or script that doesn’t appear to be actively maintained makes me hesitate to use it. Even if I was inclined to contribute, I’m not sure if the author would still accept a pull request.
Having dependabot or a something similar is a good start, but I’ve still come across zombie projects whose dependencies were kept updated but functionalities were already broken.
We need a way to quickly signal to the passing observer that software is still in a sustainment mode. One solution is to periodically update your README file to something of the following effect:
Update 2024-03: this project does not have any active features in development, but is nonetheless still maintained to address any breaking changes upstream.