Oh, they can keep up. That is, they can keep up with their paying customers. I don’t know about Anaconda specifically, but I’m pretty sure that if you pay them enough and request that they include a package for you, they will do it.
Of course they can’t keep up with supporting their non-paying customers. IMO, a self-serve community playground (Anaconda’s conda-forge, Red Hat’s Fedora or EPEL, etc.) is the best solution here: you can still use stuff if you don’t pay to outsource all the maintenance, and the company gets users familiar with the technology so they’ll reach it when they do have the money, and start looking to pay for maintenance.
(Unfortunately, capitalism demands that there’s an evil-sounding business justification for anything nice.
Business-wise, community package repositories are a lot like free licenses for students. But unlike those they’re, IMO, OK ethically – if they weren’t I wouldn’t be working at Red Hat.)
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