I tend to see projects in one of three states: 1. It doesn't exist. 2. It exists, but the last update was six months ago and it's broken. 3. It exists, does what I want, and I can use it with at most small workarounds.
If it doesn't exist, I have to make it myself. If it's broken and apparently unmaintained, I have no one to collaborate with. I might fork the project or implement my own. If it already does what I want, I don't need to collaborate. I can (and sometimes do) work with upstream maintainers to add small features that I would like or to fix bugs.
