they don't necessarily require ongoing maintenance, it depends how they are coded. some might even say the "correct" way is a non-upgradeable back-end (on-chain solidity contracts) and hash-addressed, ipfs hosted front-end. anyone can then pin the front-end themselves to ensure access or just run the code locally. dapps should rely on centralised, server based components as that mostly defeats the purpose.

uniswap is a good example. when they release an upgrade users must explicitly adopt the new version. in fact uniswap v1 and v2 still see usage despite the release of uniswap v3.

The Internet standards were built by "hacker types".