growing it like a garden is a perfect phrase imo
because on windows or Mac it may have just worked. ..until it doesn't, or leaves your windows scaled wrong or placed on monitors that don't exist or some other failure condition. at which point you reboot and hope for the best.
when it doesn't work on Linux I'd check logs, actual configuration, and even the source if I need to.and then I'd hopefully improve things and make it work the way I want it to.
Isn't the last version already that..well..last version?
If anything they could just leverage their work with proton that allows steam to play windows games on Linux to provide similar compatibility shims for old windows on modern windows