From your first example:
"This project is dead due to a lack of interest from users."
Do they really mean "lack of interest from other developers"?
They shouldn't be doing it for users, they should be doing it for themselves, and to their credit, I think that's often why they do what they do. They have more common sense than the usual. That's why their work is so good. (It's also because they have more of a cathedral-like structure, and not just with respect to the kernel.)
Who are these "users" we need interest from? How do we measure interest? Among OS's NetBSD's user base (non-corporate) is very small.
This developer chose the Linux kernel not to please users by making the "popular choice" or because it is necessarily the easiest to work with. As the blurb says, it's a matter of driver support.
Yes, Godspeed.