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.
Instead of having to figure out how an existing piece of code works, update deps and merge a couple of PRs myself, I instead have to recreate the entire functionality from scratch.
In our original world, where you did release the code, I still have the option of creating my own library (with the benefit of seeing your implementation!). So by releasing your code, you've given me strictly more options, and therefore made me better off, or at least no worse off.
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?
More generally, I wonder about your underlying thought process and expectation. Were you somehow bothered when someone raised an additional related point?
The way we interact with each here other matters.
If the new maintainers cause problems, it's their problem, so the "you" in "you can't win" would of switched between maintainers.
If you had to go to the trouble of creating your library in the first place, it means either
A) "the community" had not met your specific need, so why would they start now? Or
B) you did this for fun/learning/visibility/coping with a mania, in which case you still don't owe us any favors.
That said, doing either of the above would be nice and appreciated, but you don't have to donate anything above and beyond what you are have.