to be clear, I don't think anyone is using all of these libraries in a single project. Most Backbone web apps probably use 2-6 of these repos. So the fact that some of them have gone stale is not in itself a problem, and is normal. The fact that nearly all of them have makes it much more difficult to build sophisticated web apps with Backbone. Everything non-trivial has to be done in an in-house ad-hoc basis, or using lightly maintained 3rd party code.