I think this is somewhat unfair. Software doesn’t “require” maintenance anymore than anything else does. If you’re happy with the state of the world as it exists at the moment in time you create the software, it will continue to run that way for as long as you have working hardware to run it on. A compiled application on a computer with a frozen set of software is just as permanent as any academic paper.

The problem is most people aren’t happy with stuff being the same way forever. They want new things and new updates, and that requires changes which in turn creates maintenance.

Software maintenance is less comparable to a single academic paper than it is to the entire field of academia. Sure Freud's papers are all exactly as they were when he published, but if you want to be in the field of psychology you’re going to have a bad time if that’s the most recent version of your academic “software stack”