Being open source doesn't change that. Lots of open source project have gone stale or abandoned after one or more key developers lost interest.
Unless people are going to step up and take the lead, being open source means nothing. If you want some assurance in this area it should be:
1) project is open source
AND
2) project has a HUGE community
AND
3) there are > 2-3 key developers
(I added (2) because even hugely successful open source projects where abandoned and left in the cold when most members of the core team decided to try something different. Like, how, D (the language) was abandoned for D2 (the second, different implementation).
Unless people are going to step up and take the lead, being open source means nothing. If you want some assurance in this area it should be:
1) project is open source AND 2) project has a HUGE community AND 3) there are > 2-3 key developers
(I added (2) because even hugely successful open source projects where abandoned and left in the cold when most members of the core team decided to try something different. Like, how, D (the language) was abandoned for D2 (the second, different implementation).