7 ms·

Maintainers Wanted, open source projects looking for new maintainers

180 points by jrpt 10y ago

jrpt 10y ago
A lot of projects end up abandoned because their maintainers wanted to move on but couldn't find anyone to reliably take over. I thought it'd be useful to create a list of projects looking for new maintainers: Maintainers Wanted. If you know of any projects that should be added, feel free to make a pull request or write an issue!
- aeorgnoieang 10y ago
  But do you expect many people to want to maintain a software project, but not know or care which one? Obviously trying to contact the author or previous maintainer of an abandoned project can be difficult, but then even this wouldn't help much as they'd still need to transfer ownership to the new maintainer(s). Maybe you could offer an 'ownership escrow service' for your target audience too. That would be potentially very helpful for people that really want to wash their hands of a project.
  - 794CD01 10y ago
    Sounds like a good fit for a student or someone who wants to break in to the software industry who is looking for product management experience.
- xytop 10y ago
  People who use those products are best maintainers, and they know about those abandoned projects. A person from nowhere will never became a maintainer of any serious product.
  - pseudointellect 10y ago
    Never say never; it makes you seem very close-minded.
    - miguelrochefort 10y ago
      tool
  - daveguy 10y ago
    Users of the product may not know the product needs a new maintainer.
    - xytop 10y ago
      If you use a product and never caught a bug there then it might be that you don't need new version of the product? In other case you'll be looking to fix that bug / contact product owner and you will eventually know if its abandoned / needs maintainer.
  - jakobegger 10y ago
    I agreed to become maintainer of a project I knew nothing about.
    - nix0n 10y ago
      How did that go?
    - bluejekyll 10y ago
      Was it something you were interested in? Replaced an alternate you were working on? I find it hard to believe that a project you didn't create became something you actively wanted to support. On top of that, if the old maintainer really walked away completely, and they don't answer questions, you're walking through the dark.
      - jakobegger 10y ago
        The project I'm talking about is Postgres.app. It's a GUI wrapper around a PostgreSQL server, so there wasn't a lot of code; maintaining it mainly means I need to make new binaries several times a year. I didn't need a lot of help from the previous maintainer. (But I have rewritten most of the code since I started maintaining it) It just was a great fit; I work on a PostgreSQL client; so it seemed like a good idea to help people get a server running too.
        flomo 10y ago
        Late reply (this has dropped to pg 6), but here's to you . Our team uses postgres.app, and I know of a number of others who do too. From my standpoint, it is shocking that such a popular and great gateway into the PG world is in this situation. Complex, enterprisey software is now just drag-n-drop and develop. Postgres.app is really good stuff. You don't have a donate link, but if you're selling your front-end, please promote it.
- hooph00p 10y ago
  I really like this idea, and I'm a mid-level developer in the market to maintain a package like you've described. I would love to participate, and I'm going to watch this.
- otoburb 10y ago
  Just wanted to say thanks for making Betty[1]. It was a lot of fun using Betty a couple of years ago before the bot-hype took off. [1] https://github.com/pickhardt/betty https://github.com/pickhardt/betty
  - jrpt 10y ago
    You're welcome, glad you liked it!
lhorie 10y ago
Would be useful to have a version of this for projects looking for contributors (which I suppose would align more with students and recent grads looking to beef up their experience with someone guiding them, but who don't necessarily want take on a lead role for a project)
- kaizensoze 10y ago
  Relatedly, I really wish Github had some sort of point system to further incentivize contributing to projects. It would also be nice to have a standardized way of marking an issue as "help wanted" rather than having to search on any of the following labels: help wanted help-wanted good first bug Help Wanted contribution welcome HelpWanted first time contributor Contributor Friendly Good First Task beginner friendly good first contribution Good for New Contributors pull request wanted
  - kormoc 10y ago
    https://openhatch.org https://openhatch.org
    - mlinksva 10y ago
      Good idea, but not currently maintained!
      - akkartik 10y ago
        Why do you say that?
        mlinksva 10y ago
        https://github.com/openhatch/oh-mainline/graphs/contributors https://github.com/openhatch/oh-mainline/graphs/contributors But mostly because I know them (in particular paulproteus who is hard at work on sandstorm.io). It's a _great_ project that I've done some volunteer (non development) work for but would need a big infusion of money or contributors to be made useful again in 2016 as a project finder. Same goes for OpenHatch's 'open source comes to campus' outreach program. At least many other organizations are doing substantial and scaleable work in that vein. Not sure there's any large scale effort at building a project finder, but every small thing like Maintainers Wanted is good and helpful.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ashitlerferad 10y ago
Another earlier attempt, itself looking for a new maintainer: http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org/ http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org/
ashitlerferad 10y ago
The Debian equivalent: https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
- ckastner 10y ago
  Also, https://mentors.debian.net/ https://mentors.debian.net/ has general information on how one can get started with maintaining a package from that list.
- cbreeden 10y ago
  I don't understand. Ref: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=634757 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=634757. This project was put up for adoption, and many people replied showing interest (even some creating PPA's) but ownership was never transferred and it is still listed for adoption.
  - ckastner 10y ago
    That bug should probably be closed, because the person who published the PPA uploaded a version to Debian just a month later [1]. From the package's tracker page [2], you can see that the same person became a co-maintainer, and has been preparing most of the uploads ever since. [1] https://tracker.debian.org/news/180171 https://tracker.debian.org/news/180171 [2] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/lyx https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/lyx
ekosz 10y ago
Great idea, I just opened up a PR for my project. Before this I had no idea how I was going to find a new maintainer and felt pretty guilty for moving on. Hopefully this gains some traction!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
based2 10y ago
https://helpwanted.apache.org/ https://helpwanted.apache.org/
pyre 10y ago
Off the top of my head, this[1] is unmaintained, though in a stable-ish state. [1]: https://github.com/yeoman/grunt-usemin https://github.com/yeoman/grunt-usemin
asciihacker 10y ago
This list needs to be categorized by technologies involved in each project, such as we see at OpenHatch - https://openhatch.org/search/ https://openhatch.org/search/
- benatkin 10y ago
  Only if it gets big enough that reading through all of them is too much work. They could curate it instead.

180 points by jrpt 10y ago

jrpt 10y ago

A lot of projects end up abandoned because their maintainers wanted to move on but couldn't find anyone to reliably take over. I thought it'd be useful to create a list of projects looking for new maintainers: Maintainers Wanted. If you know of any projects that should be added, feel free to make a pull request or write an issue!

aeorgnoieang 10y ago
But do you expect many people to want to maintain a software project, but not know or care which one? Obviously trying to contact the author or previous maintainer of an abandoned project can be difficult, but then even this wouldn't help much as they'd still need to transfer ownership to the new maintainer(s). Maybe you could offer an 'ownership escrow service' for your target audience too. That would be potentially very helpful for people that really want to wash their hands of a project.
- 794CD01 10y ago
  Sounds like a good fit for a student or someone who wants to break in to the software industry who is looking for product management experience.
xytop 10y ago
People who use those products are best maintainers, and they know about those abandoned projects. A person from nowhere will never became a maintainer of any serious product.
- pseudointellect 10y ago
  Never say never; it makes you seem very close-minded.
  - miguelrochefort 10y ago
    tool
- daveguy 10y ago
  Users of the product may not know the product needs a new maintainer.
  - xytop 10y ago
    If you use a product and never caught a bug there then it might be that you don't need new version of the product? In other case you'll be looking to fix that bug / contact product owner and you will eventually know if its abandoned / needs maintainer.
- jakobegger 10y ago
  I agreed to become maintainer of a project I knew nothing about.
  - nix0n 10y ago
    How did that go?
  - bluejekyll 10y ago
    Was it something you were interested in? Replaced an alternate you were working on? I find it hard to believe that a project you didn't create became something you actively wanted to support. On top of that, if the old maintainer really walked away completely, and they don't answer questions, you're walking through the dark.
    - jakobegger 10y ago
      The project I'm talking about is Postgres.app. It's a GUI wrapper around a PostgreSQL server, so there wasn't a lot of code; maintaining it mainly means I need to make new binaries several times a year. I didn't need a lot of help from the previous maintainer. (But I have rewritten most of the code since I started maintaining it) It just was a great fit; I work on a PostgreSQL client; so it seemed like a good idea to help people get a server running too.
      - flomo 10y ago
        Late reply (this has dropped to pg 6), but here's to you . Our team uses postgres.app, and I know of a number of others who do too. From my standpoint, it is shocking that such a popular and great gateway into the PG world is in this situation. Complex, enterprisey software is now just drag-n-drop and develop. Postgres.app is really good stuff. You don't have a donate link, but if you're selling your front-end, please promote it.
hooph00p 10y ago
I really like this idea, and I'm a mid-level developer in the market to maintain a package like you've described. I would love to participate, and I'm going to watch this.
otoburb 10y ago
Just wanted to say thanks for making Betty[1]. It was a lot of fun using Betty a couple of years ago before the bot-hype took off. [1] https://github.com/pickhardt/betty https://github.com/pickhardt/betty
- jrpt 10y ago
  You're welcome, glad you liked it!

lhorie 10y ago

Would be useful to have a version of this for projects looking for contributors (which I suppose would align more with students and recent grads looking to beef up their experience with someone guiding them, but who don't necessarily want take on a lead role for a project)

kaizensoze 10y ago
Relatedly, I really wish Github had some sort of point system to further incentivize contributing to projects. It would also be nice to have a standardized way of marking an issue as "help wanted" rather than having to search on any of the following labels: help wanted help-wanted good first bug Help Wanted contribution welcome HelpWanted first time contributor Contributor Friendly Good First Task beginner friendly good first contribution Good for New Contributors pull request wanted
- kormoc 10y ago
  https://openhatch.org https://openhatch.org
  - mlinksva 10y ago
    Good idea, but not currently maintained!
    - akkartik 10y ago
      Why do you say that?
      - mlinksva 10y ago
        https://github.com/openhatch/oh-mainline/graphs/contributors https://github.com/openhatch/oh-mainline/graphs/contributors But mostly because I know them (in particular paulproteus who is hard at work on sandstorm.io). It's a _great_ project that I've done some volunteer (non development) work for but would need a big infusion of money or contributors to be made useful again in 2016 as a project finder. Same goes for OpenHatch's 'open source comes to campus' outreach program. At least many other organizations are doing substantial and scaleable work in that vein. Not sure there's any large scale effort at building a project finder, but every small thing like Maintainers Wanted is good and helpful.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

ashitlerferad 10y ago

Another earlier attempt, itself looking for a new maintainer: http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org/ http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org/

ashitlerferad 10y ago

The Debian equivalent: https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/

ckastner 10y ago
Also, https://mentors.debian.net/ https://mentors.debian.net/ has general information on how one can get started with maintaining a package from that list.
cbreeden 10y ago
I don't understand. Ref: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=634757 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=634757. This project was put up for adoption, and many people replied showing interest (even some creating PPA's) but ownership was never transferred and it is still listed for adoption.
- ckastner 10y ago
  That bug should probably be closed, because the person who published the PPA uploaded a version to Debian just a month later [1]. From the package's tracker page [2], you can see that the same person became a co-maintainer, and has been preparing most of the uploads ever since. [1] https://tracker.debian.org/news/180171 https://tracker.debian.org/news/180171 [2] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/lyx https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/lyx

ekosz 10y ago

Great idea, I just opened up a PR for my project. Before this I had no idea how I was going to find a new maintainer and felt pretty guilty for moving on. Hopefully this gains some traction!

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

based2 10y ago

https://helpwanted.apache.org/ https://helpwanted.apache.org/

pyre 10y ago

Off the top of my head, this[1] is unmaintained, though in a stable-ish state. [1]: https://github.com/yeoman/grunt-usemin https://github.com/yeoman/grunt-usemin

asciihacker 10y ago

This list needs to be categorized by technologies involved in each project, such as we see at OpenHatch - https://openhatch.org/search/ https://openhatch.org/search/

benatkin 10y ago
Only if it gets big enough that reading through all of them is too much work. They could curate it instead.