Kügler: Plasma’s road ahead

> Yeah, yeah, volunteers, free-time, blah, blah–you’d think volunteers would want their work to last more than a couple of years before being thrown into the bitbucket

I think you are confusing the product with single versions of a product.

The people developing Emacs are likely proud that it has been in use for decades and is still being used, but it doesn't decrease their accomplishment if nobody is using Emacs 1.0 anymore.

They are likely more happy if people throw an old version into the bitbucket and move to a more recent one than keep using the ancient one. Maybe that older version is not even maintained anymore.