> The expectation that software libraries or frameworks should break every few months is disturbing
I think it is more that recent updates are used as a proxy for determining if the developer still cares about the project.
The problem is it is hard to distinguish between a project that has been abandoned, and a project that is feature complete and hasn't had any bugs reported in a while.
Although, if you assume that any software is free of bugs, and that at least some users will report bugs, if there is low activity, that suggests that either it isn't well maintained, or there isn't a critical mass of users to find and report those bugs. But then, higher quality software will require a higher number of users to hit that critical mass so it doesn't give you that much information unless you also know how good the software is.
I think it is more that recent updates are used as a proxy for determining if the developer still cares about the project.
The problem is it is hard to distinguish between a project that has been abandoned, and a project that is feature complete and hasn't had any bugs reported in a while.
Although, if you assume that any software is free of bugs, and that at least some users will report bugs, if there is low activity, that suggests that either it isn't well maintained, or there isn't a critical mass of users to find and report those bugs. But then, higher quality software will require a higher number of users to hit that critical mass so it doesn't give you that much information unless you also know how good the software is.