I in fact would oppose any idea that WD should be dumped into source forge as a thing. It is Brian's he owns it and he is definitely supporting it. But I do propose that as a community we should be looking at our exposure to single developer software (not just WD) and the impact that could hit us if anything happens to those single developers.
This is not about knocking WD off a perch, it will always be important to many as a turn-key (albeit with its own learning curve) program with support for a large number of station types and activities.
The original point was "... once the company that developed the original software no longer wants to maintain it". If Brian wants to keep supporting it and it's making him enough money that it's still a viable thing, then by all means he should keep on with it. If, on the other hand, Brian decided that he'd had enough and wanted to stop supporting the software, MY OPINION is that he should take the source code to sourceforge and tell the world to "knock yourselves out."
This isn't magic - it's software. Everything's complicated when you don't have the facts and there are PLENTY of success stories that say that open-source software works. If he has trade secrets built into his code, then don't release that code. If he uses non-redistributable libraries, then those need to be figured out some other way. If he's happy with the status quo, then by all means keep at it.
The point isn't that I'm suggesting that anyone should be deprived of anything: quite to the contrary. I'm not suggesting that anyone be forced to do anything, that anyone should even do anything that makes them sad. As a community, people come to depend on software from vendors all the time. When the vendor is done with it, they can do with it what they want.
I'm not a weather guy - I just play one on the Internet. On the other hand, I've been a software developer for almost 40 years, and it is my opinion (from many years of being dedicated to a vendor, only to have them screw me over completely by dropping all support and trash-canning software, forcing me to abandon hardware and processes that relied on that software) that the responsible thing to do WHEN GETTING OUT OF THE BUSINESS is to provide a path by which the people that have come to depend on you can forge on without you. I understand that it's altruistic and high-minded, which appears to make some people uncomfortable, but it's not like I'm suggesting that people just give away their children.
If you are a software developer AND you've developed software that has a following AND you don't want to ever look at it again THEN and only then should you consider making anything available. Obviously, you can't give away anything that isn't yours, and that needs to be taken into account.
While I'm up here, banging away on the lectern, let me suggest that many of these software projects could actually benefit from "a million eyes" looking at the code. I've been a strong advocate for group development for a long time, and niche software (like weather system data loggers, for example) could usually stand to benefit from a fresh perspective and a different set of goals or concerns. If one person is developing a software package they can't benefit from anyone else's experience or come to understand something that they didn't before.
Once again, I'm not suggesting taking anything away from anyone. If you are going to throw it away, then offer to someone to reuse and let them benefit from the challenge and the rest of the community benefit from a magnanimous gift.