In a hierarchical community that would work. The top level (board of a non-profit for instance) would decide to take on such a common commitment and it would then be its responsibility to do whatever is necessary for the lower levels of the hierarchy to followup. In a horizontal community it is the other way around: individual commitments become common commitments when more than one community member work on the same thing. But even when that happens, it does not mean that the community, as a whole, has a responsibility to continue… because it is up to each individual member to decide what they devote their time on.
ForgeFed has not changed since Forgefriends started. But there is still hope: although one of the authors left, the other is still around.
In 2022 I think most of my time will be dedicated to working on a JSON format to export/import issues/pull requests/…, i.e. the continuation of the fedeproxy format. I don’t know if it will lead to an open standard. But it is very close to what forgefed needs and it may help whoever continues the work. This is all very blurry at the moment but I hope it will become clearer as the implementation progresses.