Yes, I get your point and I paused for a second if I should really use the word guarantee, because sometimes development just stops on software, regardless of license.
The thing is, if development stops on proprietary software, the project is truly dead. With FOSS it can always be revived by someone with enough interest in the software because the codebase is freely available. So instead of being dead, it’s merely “in hibernation”.
A good example is the Amarok mp3 player that I used in KDE 15 years ago. It stopped being maintained around 2011 and fell in disuse until last year some people picked up the code, cleaned it up and ported it to Qt5, and now it’s being actively maintained again.
Yes, I get your point and I paused for a second if I should really use the word guarantee, because sometimes development just stops on software, regardless of license.
The thing is, if development stops on proprietary software, the project is truly dead. With FOSS it can always be revived by someone with enough interest in the software because the codebase is freely available. So instead of being dead, it’s merely “in hibernation”.
A good example is the Amarok mp3 player that I used in KDE 15 years ago. It stopped being maintained around 2011 and fell in disuse until last year some people picked up the code, cleaned it up and ported it to Qt5, and now it’s being actively maintained again.
I imagine it doesn’t happen that often, but that’s a really nice success story