If you're reading this, it may mean you think my project is dead/unmaintained. Please read this before you dismiss it.
The short version is: please make sure to ask about a change you'd like before proceeding. It's likely I will reply an cooperate. A lack of updates often means that the code does what's intended.
So you see that there are no commits to my project for some time and maybe think it's not maintained. It's not that easy. Particularly in case of Rust crates. The primary reason for my project lacking changes is that I don't need the changes and nobody else opened an issue asking for the changes. I don't have a need to change my code just to make it appear active.
While I don't have enough time to write code for all my repos, I do have the time to do PRs and discuss how some code should be changed. If you need a new feature in my project, just file an issue and wait for my response. If I don't reply within a week or two, you may assume that I am dead. (Or didin't see the issue for some strange reason.) In case of an obvious bug (a typo, off-by-one...) you may go ahead with a PR.
I will make sure to at worst write somethig like "I like that feature, but currenly don't have the time to implement it." If you don't have the time either, consider searching for some other project.
I tend to desing my projects with Unix philosophy in mind. "Do one thing and do it well." This combined with a great dependency management of Rust makes it likely for the above situation to happen. If you're asking "can I rely on this crate author to support the crate?" the answer is: Either you can, or the crate is sufficiently simple for you to do the chaneges you need.