3 ms·

There is no obligation to support the code at all though. You can release it once, say it’s unsupported, and let the community pick up maintenance / forks if th

by jiofih 5y ago

There is no obligation to support the code at all though. You can release it once, say it’s unsupported, and let the community pick up maintenance / forks if there’s enough interest. Otherwise, no harm done.

Phenix88be 5y ago
> and let the community pick up maintenance / forks if there’s enough interest. This almost never happen, even when the interest is very high... I love open source and free software, but we should face that this point is more a fantasy than a real thing.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  I would say, it depends on the codebase and documentation. Taking up a abandoned mess of undocumented spaghetti code? No thank you. And most "open sourced" repositories are like this. But the ones that have at least rudimentary documenation, something a new maintainer has something to work with - those are the few ones, that might be picked up by some community. Rare, yes - because there is not much fun in writing documentation on your personal pet project in your free time. But it might be still worth it.
jandrewrogers 5y ago
In practice it doesn't work this way. Saying it is "unsupported" does not mean people will respect that boundary, nor will it prevent people from contacting you expecting your time and attention, which is what actually happens. There is significant overhead to open sourcing software.
- jannes 5y ago
  People won’t respect the boundary if you host the code on github, because it’s just too easy to open issues or pull requests. However, what about just releasing a zip file with the sources and linking it on your downloads page?
  - perk 5y ago
    Someone should make sourceavailable.com - A service that automatically pulls my private repos from GitHub and makes it available as open source to other programmers. A read only version of GitHub, without the isssue/PR overhead. Code should be easy to read/download on https://sourceavailable.com/username/repo https://sourceavailable.com/username/repo
    - perk 5y ago
      Someone bought the domain after I wrote this comment. Hope they’re working on this idea :)
  - makapuf 5y ago
    Some people did close the issues and store them in a directory as plaintext on the repo. Want to report a bug ? make a PR. the extra little friction was added so that you need to spend a little time (and having spent that little time you might as well research a bit your bug or read the doc). Bonus point, your project is now completely portable.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  This. Even for code I didn't publish (like corporate SDK internals), I have been contacted (which took some work, because my employer did not like customers interacting with Engineering), and told (not "asked" -told) to make changes to our corporate, closed-source SDK to suit some rando's tinkering around (also, for extra credit, said rando hadn't even purchased one of our cameras). Even open-sourcing has its caveats. Anyone that has spent any time at all, on most tech forums, have seen the "Open Source Holy Wars" being fought. I tend to use the MIT license. I won't go into the reasons why. I write OSS, and I support it. I choose to do so under MIT. In the past, I have been contacted (I make it easy to get in touch with me), and told that I was a "corporate shill" for not using GPL. That's always a great way to start the day. Also, our corporation had to fend off a few legal threats, because some of our software looked vaguely like some GPL stuff (I guarantee it wasn't -they were anal about the GPL), so zealots would sometimes throw sueballs (or vague threats, thereof) at us. At least the patent trolls would do a little bit of homework before attacking us. These folks wouldn't even bother wondering if they might be mistaken before unleashing the hounds.
  - qmmmur 5y ago
    Can't you just ignore them?

by jiofih 5y ago

Phenix88be 5y ago

> and let the community pick up maintenance / forks if there’s enough interest. This almost never happen, even when the interest is very high... I love open source and free software, but we should face that this point is more a fantasy than a real thing.

hutzlibu 5y ago
I would say, it depends on the codebase and documentation. Taking up a abandoned mess of undocumented spaghetti code? No thank you. And most "open sourced" repositories are like this. But the ones that have at least rudimentary documenation, something a new maintainer has something to work with - those are the few ones, that might be picked up by some community. Rare, yes - because there is not much fun in writing documentation on your personal pet project in your free time. But it might be still worth it.

jandrewrogers 5y ago

In practice it doesn't work this way. Saying it is "unsupported" does not mean people will respect that boundary, nor will it prevent people from contacting you expecting your time and attention, which is what actually happens. There is significant overhead to open sourcing software.

jannes 5y ago
People won’t respect the boundary if you host the code on github, because it’s just too easy to open issues or pull requests. However, what about just releasing a zip file with the sources and linking it on your downloads page?
- perk 5y ago
  Someone should make sourceavailable.com - A service that automatically pulls my private repos from GitHub and makes it available as open source to other programmers. A read only version of GitHub, without the isssue/PR overhead. Code should be easy to read/download on https://sourceavailable.com/username/repo https://sourceavailable.com/username/repo
  - perk 5y ago
    Someone bought the domain after I wrote this comment. Hope they’re working on this idea :)
- makapuf 5y ago
  Some people did close the issues and store them in a directory as plaintext on the repo. Want to report a bug ? make a PR. the extra little friction was added so that you need to spend a little time (and having spent that little time you might as well research a bit your bug or read the doc). Bonus point, your project is now completely portable.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
This. Even for code I didn't publish (like corporate SDK internals), I have been contacted (which took some work, because my employer did not like customers interacting with Engineering), and told (not "asked" -told) to make changes to our corporate, closed-source SDK to suit some rando's tinkering around (also, for extra credit, said rando hadn't even purchased one of our cameras). Even open-sourcing has its caveats. Anyone that has spent any time at all, on most tech forums, have seen the "Open Source Holy Wars" being fought. I tend to use the MIT license. I won't go into the reasons why. I write OSS, and I support it. I choose to do so under MIT. In the past, I have been contacted (I make it easy to get in touch with me), and told that I was a "corporate shill" for not using GPL. That's always a great way to start the day. Also, our corporation had to fend off a few legal threats, because some of our software looked vaguely like some GPL stuff (I guarantee it wasn't -they were anal about the GPL), so zealots would sometimes throw sueballs (or vague threats, thereof) at us. At least the patent trolls would do a little bit of homework before attacking us. These folks wouldn't even bother wondering if they might be mistaken before unleashing the hounds.
- qmmmur 5y ago
  Can't you just ignore them?