While you're technically correct that people don't owe anyone anything, I've often had the experience of using an open source library that was otherwise excellent, except that it had critical bugs that hadn't been patched, or that it hadn't been updated to work with the latest versions of it's dependencies. Popular repositories like this often have tens of high-quality pull-requests fixing these issues, but using them is non-trivial because you'd have to merge everything. These PRs pile up for a few months until someone realises that the repo is unmaintained and forks. At which point you have two versions of the project (often with the same name), and everyone is left to figure out which one they should use.

It would save everyone a lot of bother if maintainers of these repositories took half an hour to update everyone that they didn't have time to maintain the repository and pass the baton on to someone / some people who do.

Think about this claim: ‘a creator of open source doesn’t owe X anything’. First, using a financial metaphor misses the point. Second, it is often used as a cliche and/or rhetorical device to shut down conversations about ethical considerations. Third, I get it: there are people that expect too much, which can encourage an (over) reaction from someone who shares an open source library.

Many people bristle when someone else uses the word ‘should’ in a sentence. I’d like software developers to be more mindful of what it means to participate in a community.

Who said anything about vetting?