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This notion that software must have a community is really tiresome and reeks of entitlement. Most people who create OSS projects are doing so in their spare tim

This notion that software must have a community is really tiresome and reeks of entitlement. Most people who create OSS projects are doing so in their spare time as a charitable endeavor and don't want to support it forever. Open sourcing end-of-life products so they can possibly have a second life as open source software, serve as code examples to the community and be preserved as part of our collective history is undoubtedly a good thing. Spreading the idea that only supported community-driven OSS is worthy of existence is basically asking anybody who ever open sources anything to commit to involving themselves with it indefinitely. If that's the barrier to entry, I suspect you'll see a lot less open source software going forward into the future. ;)

mhausenblas 11y ago
Agreed for individuals. For (commercial) organizations I think it is valid. One good citizen in this respect is btw the ASF: http://attic.apache.org/ http://attic.apache.org/ … clearly flags the dead ;)
- dalke 11y ago
  The essay puts them into the same group - "established commercial entity .. startup that pivots ... or if you as an individual trying to increase your chances to land your dream job through creating an interesting OSS portfolio". There are also people like me, the owner and sole employee of a commercial organization, and employees of a company which allows 10% time to, among other thing, work on free software or whatever else interests them. It says "next time you embark on creating an OSS project, consider the following steps to avoid a zombie". Let me tell you my story. In 2003 I wrote PyRSS2Gen, a Python-based RSS2 generator. It took 2-3 days. I wrote documentation and put it on my web site. It's now used in a lot of packages. I get a support question about once or twice a year. At this point the code might as well have been written by a stranger as I don't recall the details of how it works. I don't want to put more work into it. Which means it's a "zombie" according to this essay. Or it's a dead weight keeping me from doing other things. The essay implies that there's an obligation that I and any other distributor of free code must maintain things in perpetuity. Like unimpressive, I do not like the implicit sense of entitlement. I have also written plenty of other software which are dead ends, but it took experience under deployment to figure out why it was dead end. Am I supposed to somehow withdraw the software from the public eye once I no longer think it's useful? There's still other software which I developed for a client as free software, which I made available, but which I won't develop further unless I get funded for it. I haven't touched some of those packages for 5+ years. Do I work on it for free, and not do the the consulting work that pays my bills?
ternaryoperator 11y ago
Agreed. I do wish that on projects--both commercial and individual--when the owners have decided not to continue contributing, they'd put a note to that effect. A lot of times it's hard to tell if, say, there's been no dev activity for six months, whether the project is just temporarily quiescent or whether the owner has decided to move on to other things.
- dalke 11y ago
  How does it affect your decision making? If there has been no development for 6 months, have you tried emailing them with a consulting or support offer? Because I've put things off for years sometimes due to lack of funding.

mhausenblas 11y ago

Agreed for individuals. For (commercial) organizations I think it is valid. One good citizen in this respect is btw the ASF: http://attic.apache.org/ http://attic.apache.org/ … clearly flags the dead ;)

dalke 11y ago
The essay puts them into the same group - "established commercial entity .. startup that pivots ... or if you as an individual trying to increase your chances to land your dream job through creating an interesting OSS portfolio". There are also people like me, the owner and sole employee of a commercial organization, and employees of a company which allows 10% time to, among other thing, work on free software or whatever else interests them. It says "next time you embark on creating an OSS project, consider the following steps to avoid a zombie". Let me tell you my story. In 2003 I wrote PyRSS2Gen, a Python-based RSS2 generator. It took 2-3 days. I wrote documentation and put it on my web site. It's now used in a lot of packages. I get a support question about once or twice a year. At this point the code might as well have been written by a stranger as I don't recall the details of how it works. I don't want to put more work into it. Which means it's a "zombie" according to this essay. Or it's a dead weight keeping me from doing other things. The essay implies that there's an obligation that I and any other distributor of free code must maintain things in perpetuity. Like unimpressive, I do not like the implicit sense of entitlement. I have also written plenty of other software which are dead ends, but it took experience under deployment to figure out why it was dead end. Am I supposed to somehow withdraw the software from the public eye once I no longer think it's useful? There's still other software which I developed for a client as free software, which I made available, but which I won't develop further unless I get funded for it. I haven't touched some of those packages for 5+ years. Do I work on it for free, and not do the the consulting work that pays my bills?

ternaryoperator 11y ago

Agreed. I do wish that on projects--both commercial and individual--when the owners have decided not to continue contributing, they'd put a note to that effect. A lot of times it's hard to tell if, say, there's been no dev activity for six months, whether the project is just temporarily quiescent or whether the owner has decided to move on to other things.

dalke 11y ago
How does it affect your decision making? If there has been no development for 6 months, have you tried emailing them with a consulting or support offer? Because I've put things off for years sometimes due to lack of funding.