But it’s still sad that there’s probably no world where someone will still focus on jemalloc with professional support from their employer. It means that an important piece of technology will not continue improving.
Forking is possible, but it doesn’t look like the kind of project that many people could fork and improve, it requires a lot of focus by people with specific domain knowledge.
Parent stated that he's sad the project is no longer maintained. That's a perfectly reasonable and human response. Parent does not have to defend having an emotion, even less provide objective truth for why he feels sad.
If you don't agree, fine. But I don't see why one would write a paragraph long statement, I validating someone's emotional response.
It's hardly a reasonable response. By casually saying that it's "sad" when a maintainer gives up on a project, GP is also including a very real and heavy implication that this is somehow wrong on their part and that they should continue to shoulder that burden, as a demand from the community. This is a really unhealthy attitude and we should all do away with it. Instead, just acknowledge that the project is now there for the taking by anyone who may be interested. There's nothing "sad!" about this whatsoever, and we should not pretend that there is.
I'm really not getting it, what's "sad" about this? It's just the OP maintainer saying "I can't be bothered to maintain this stuff anymore, so if you care about it, please step up, fork() the repo and do the work yourself!" Isn't that how everything FLOSS is supposed to work in the first place? I for one think it's way more "SAD!" when 100% volunteer FLOSS maintainers and developers are tacitly expected to do a whole lot more work than they're comfortable with, and then they burn out and leave the community for good.