A project can end because its purpose was served, not because its ambition failed.

Endings get read as verdicts. Something stops, and the assumption is that it did not work, when often it worked exactly as intended and there is simply nothing left for it to do. Confusing completion with collapse leads people to keep things alive past their usefulness, mostly so the ending will not look like a loss, and those extra years add nothing anyone wanted.

If something of yours is winding down, ask what it was for and whether that has happened. Closing it deliberately, with a sentence about what it achieved, is a different act from letting it fade.