Some projects get maintained. Some get shipped and never touched again.
The default says the first is responsible and the second is neglect. A repo without recent commits is abandoned. Abandoned is failure.
It's not.
Some things are done. Not dead. Done. The thing does what it was built to do. It has no bugs because nobody found one. It has no new features because the features it has are the ones it needs.
A utility that cuts one thing cleanly. A library that solved one problem and stopped. A CLI that hasn't added a flag in two years and still works. These are not failures of maintenance. They are successes of scope.
The difference is knowing before you start. Is this a garden or a monument? A garden wants tending. A monument needs to stand. The mistake is treating every project like a garden and then feeling guilty when you don't water the stones.
Not everything you build owes you years. Some things owe you a week, an afternoon, a single late night. They ship, they work, they're done. Walking away is not abandoning them. It's honoring what they were meant to be.
Declaring something finished is a skill.
Walking away and meaning it.