Almost no software just works if left unattended for years. If its a library it means it will likely not work with the latest versions of everything else. Your bug reports will go unattended.

People also have a lot more tolerance for missing features or issues if they see it improving regularly. While getting something unsatisfactory as the last and final version is not nearly as acceptable.

I have built Unix/Linux stuff from the 1990s with no code changes. Programs that do well defined things generally have a long shelf life. Even X stuff often works, though it can look bad on modern displays.

Math kernels, codecs, and so forth can more or less live forever.

Software is the most toxic environment possible for freshness bias. Every month it seems like there's a new framework/ecosystem/whatever and everyone's migrating to it and you're behind the times if you're not using it.

This is only if you bother chasing the absolute freshest trend. Things like React, Ruby on Rails, Node.JS, etc have been the standard and most popular tools for close to 10 years now and aren't going anywhere.

I guess this is why a lot of sites now removed dates from their articles.

Google allows for searches within ranges of dates.