Well, if you wrote stable code in the first place, there wouldn't indeed be any need for updates!

Jokes aside, a lot of developers would call a project "dead" when is working as intended and not receiving new commits.

'ls' is dead, we should stop using it.

Bad example ;) Updated on June 17th: https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/commit/24053fbd8f9bd3...

OpenBSD true(1) however... seems pretty much dead. https://github.com/openbsd/src/tree/master/usr.bin/true

It's pretty amazing.

True. Besides, my specs are future proof. So I always offer my clients a 120 years "no update needed" guaranty, with very durable titanium punched cards.

What alternative do you propose?

I think you missed the joke.