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"I don't mean to let them die, I mean, to find like-minded individuals to which you can defer some or all of the work?" I've seen lots of these calls for help

"I don't mean to let them die, I mean, to find like-minded individuals to which you can defer some or all of the work?" I've seen lots of these calls for help fail. And someone else points out: It's open source. Literally anyone can continue the work at any time. There's no need for the original creator to find someone else to continue it. Anyone can just do it.

sokoloff 5y ago
There’s a community aspect to consider though. You and I could both decide to continue some open-source project. The community will (reasonably and maybe even “rightly”) look to the original maintainer for guidance on which 0, 1, or 2 forks they suggest to continue.
- icoder 5y ago
  Sure, one thing (it being OK to drop an already open source project) doesn't exclude the other (suggesting a fork if there happen to be any).
- gmueckl 5y ago
  It's even worse with other patterns, e.g. when the original project is suffering from some bit rot, the maintainer is unresponsive for months, independent forks spring up to fix that rot and suddenly you get a bout of activity in the original project and then another lengthy period of silence.
  - josephg 5y ago
    Yep. I think its important for project maintainers to be clear about the maintenance status of a project. You don't have to maintain a project forever, but if its not maintained its good to be clear about that. Eg: "This project works but will not be maintained. Github issues & PRs will be ignored. If you want changes, fork the project. If your fork is being actively maintained, let me know and I'll link to your fork from this readme."
  - beckingz 5y ago
    This is truly frustrating, and happens in organizations as well. It is admirable when people actually make decisions.
onion2k 5y ago
Anyone can just do it. They literally can't though. Only the owner or a maintainer has permission to merge PRs in to the main branch. Anyone can fork a repo, write a patch, and PR it, but that's where outside contributions stop. It still takes someone from the original team to accept a contribution. Forking a project and then maintaining that fork as a separate project is an option, but it's divisive one that a lot of the community will react badly to if they see it as a hostile takeover or if there's a change in goal (eg making a commercial product out of the abandoned project.)
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  There are endless examples of forks that pick up where some other project left off. They give it a new name, explain what's going on, and move on. If it's seen as hostile, that means the original project is still active and doesn't need this?
  - cbm-vic-20 5y ago
    This has happened with some pretty big names, too. gcc did this, and so did Jenkins. Didn't node.js do this a few years ago, too?
- h2odragon 5y ago
  There's version control other that Git / GitHub / etc. It's even possible to forego version control and just release tarballs somewhere.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    Ok, but you'd hope there's some form of access control that stops someone just overwriting the canonical source with their own version. That's the same as the maintainer having to accept changes. If there isn't, and anyone can write straight to the source, then good luck to anyone using that package because it's probably not very safe.
    - h2odragon 5y ago

sokoloff 5y ago

There’s a community aspect to consider though. You and I could both decide to continue some open-source project. The community will (reasonably and maybe even “rightly”) look to the original maintainer for guidance on which 0, 1, or 2 forks they suggest to continue.

icoder 5y ago
Sure, one thing (it being OK to drop an already open source project) doesn't exclude the other (suggesting a fork if there happen to be any).
gmueckl 5y ago
It's even worse with other patterns, e.g. when the original project is suffering from some bit rot, the maintainer is unresponsive for months, independent forks spring up to fix that rot and suddenly you get a bout of activity in the original project and then another lengthy period of silence.
- josephg 5y ago
  Yep. I think its important for project maintainers to be clear about the maintenance status of a project. You don't have to maintain a project forever, but if its not maintained its good to be clear about that. Eg: "This project works but will not be maintained. Github issues & PRs will be ignored. If you want changes, fork the project. If your fork is being actively maintained, let me know and I'll link to your fork from this readme."
- beckingz 5y ago
  This is truly frustrating, and happens in organizations as well. It is admirable when people actually make decisions.

onion2k 5y ago

Anyone can just do it. They literally can't though. Only the owner or a maintainer has permission to merge PRs in to the main branch. Anyone can fork a repo, write a patch, and PR it, but that's where outside contributions stop. It still takes someone from the original team to accept a contribution. Forking a project and then maintaining that fork as a separate project is an option, but it's divisive one that a lot of the community will react badly to if they see it as a hostile takeover or if there's a change in goal (eg making a commercial product out of the abandoned project.)

ricardobeat 5y ago
There are endless examples of forks that pick up where some other project left off. They give it a new name, explain what's going on, and move on. If it's seen as hostile, that means the original project is still active and doesn't need this?
- cbm-vic-20 5y ago
  This has happened with some pretty big names, too. gcc did this, and so did Jenkins. Didn't node.js do this a few years ago, too?
h2odragon 5y ago
There's version control other that Git / GitHub / etc. It's even possible to forego version control and just release tarballs somewhere.
- onion2k 5y ago
  Ok, but you'd hope there's some form of access control that stops someone just overwriting the canonical source with their own version. That's the same as the maintainer having to accept changes. If there isn't, and anyone can write straight to the source, then good luck to anyone using that package because it's probably not very safe.
  - h2odragon 5y ago