Rewriting stable software is a bad idea, but not because we have too few maintainers. Indeed, the way of dealing with the "too few maintainers" problem is to bite the bullet and start aggressively paying down technical debt so that the ecosystem can (1) become more sustainable going forward, given the same amount of maintainers, and (2) attract more people to the job of being a maintainer, by easing some of the hardest parts of that job. Rewriting stuff in Rust is one way - though a highly risky, perhaps even extreme way - of paying down technical debt.