The problem is digital things don't decay in the same way as physical objects. AI can shit out a webpage for an institute that doesn't really exist and make it sound awesome until you realize there's nothing there. A webpage with a vibrant community behind it that is actively maintained looks, at first glance, the same as a page that's been put out to the pasture. A physical store that's out of business will accumulate cruft, broken windows, vines everywhere. There's not really an equivalent for bitrot. Sure, my website from 1996 looks dated because I used frames and we don't do that no more, but eBay and Yahoo and Myspace are still around. Link rot does set in though. Links to pages that no longer exist because the person running it has passed. Archive.org has such a good purpose.
Thing is though, for software, sometimes things can just be done. If a perfectly good piece of software hasn't been updated in years because it hasn't needed to be updated, then let it sit, ensconced in stone. The problem is it's hard to tell the difference between that, and something that needs maintaining but hasn't been.
> If a perfectly good piece of software hasn't been updated in years because it hasn't needed to be updated
This. When people say "I wouldn't use this because it hasn't been updated for years", maybe it's because it doesn't need updating?
PHP community would like a word
If the repository has an issue tracker, that helps. Then you can at least see if people are posting issues and whether they are being resolved.
I’ve seen projects that haven’t had a release in years, but the maintainer is still answering questions. I would say that counts as actively maintained, since there’s still someone around to handle bug reports.