The kind of software projects that make the world go round continue past the lives of their original authors and can easily span decades. 5 years is just enough for the original shake-out.
Come back when they are ready to pay for that.
Sure, I'll let my Product Lead know that we're selling toys that only skiddies, not telecos NOCs use.
That out of the way, you're right that some niches require a lot longer cycles, but it's the big big biiiig advantage of FOSS. Downstream can maintain it for as long as they wish. As you said things got shaken out by the community for free basically, and if some serious software is so so serious that upgrading and retesting/certifying is somehow more expensive than trying to airgap an EOLed pile of libs (while at the same time it needs support) then the stakeholders can do it.
The name on the software might remain unchanged for decades. That doesn't mean that the software remains identical for that time.
and how much are you paying for support?
I believe what you are trying to say is that you chose the wrong tool for the job. It is really condescending to lash out on other projects like that just because they don't share the same needs as you. They owe you nothing. Python is free and open source, just fork the damn language spec and support it yourself.
Dependencies on libraries is a different story, there's only so many ways you can implement a functionality, and some of these happen to be decades old!
