I think its also the pyramid of age - as you work in this field a lot of people burn out, the field was significantly smaller in the past and has shown huge growth, and the young say "yes sir!" and work nights and weekends on the fucking stupid idea while the older folks push back.

So in general most of the people have worked on a bunch of greenfield development, thought of the project 2 years old as aged out entirely, and never thought you might "maintain" something at all.