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I've had open source projects be dormant for 10 years only to get a question pop up out of the blue from someone who found it useful. I hope that Gitlab and ot

I've had open source projects be dormant for 10 years only to get a question pop up out of the blue from someone who found it useful. I hope that Gitlab and other hosts of the open source community think hard about this before implementing any policy like this. There are projects that are useful, and stable, but for whatever reason do not have a lot of users. There is no reason to let those projects die, or force the maintainers to have to do a song and dance to keep them around. Yes, there's a cost, but there's a benefit too, and I hope these hosts of the open source community remember that.

andrew_ 4y ago
Ditto. Sometimes stuff reaches a point where it's mature or stable and doesn't need more development. Sometimes life gets in the way and years down the road someone stops in to pick up the torch. That's open source.
- blagie 4y ago
  I have a lot of projects from >10 years ago which are mature, stable, used, and the only time they see active development is if there's a breaking change elsewhere (a lot of them interact with other tools). I also have some amount of open science stuff. I count on github / gitlab being archival for things like archiving how I process data in some piece of research. Literally all I really need of a git host is to support the git protocol, and to keep stuff around for me forever. I appreciate having pull requests, conversations, and what-not, but the #1 requirement is having my stuff there, reliably stored, and available to the world. I'll mention: I don't blame gitlab for a decision they didn't make. If you've ever worked in a corporation, you'll know a lot of stupid decisions ALMOST get made all the time. gitlab tends to be more open than other organizations, so we see the inner workings. I've always seen them pull back when a decision is particularly numbskull.
- Bluecobra 4y ago
  I use this small utility in Linux called mdump to test multicast on a semi regular basis. It does what it is supposed to and I never ran into any issues. I just happened to look at the source code again the other day and it was last updated in 1994!
nonethewiser 4y ago
> I've had open source projects be dormant for 10 years only to get a question pop up out of the blue from someone who found it useful. Seems like their new policy wont prohibit that though.
- nicce 4y ago
  It does since if you don’t touch the project aka it is dormant, it disappears. And nobody can know its existence and find it useful.
jonathanstrange 4y ago
It would also punish programming languages with good long-term support. For example, Ada has been deliberately designed for long-term maintainability. Many Ada packages haven't been modified for years because they are finished. They work as intended. Unless someone finds a bug, there is no need to update or change them. Not everybody considers constant feature creep desirable.
mytailorisrich 4y ago
The crux of the issue is that Gitlab is a commercial enterprise so at one point it is reasonable for them not to want to host dormant projects for free when it costs them money to do that. In fact, even if they weren't a commercial enterprise they would still need to balance the books in order to survive.

andrew_ 4y ago

Ditto. Sometimes stuff reaches a point where it's mature or stable and doesn't need more development. Sometimes life gets in the way and years down the road someone stops in to pick up the torch. That's open source.

blagie 4y ago
I have a lot of projects from >10 years ago which are mature, stable, used, and the only time they see active development is if there's a breaking change elsewhere (a lot of them interact with other tools). I also have some amount of open science stuff. I count on github / gitlab being archival for things like archiving how I process data in some piece of research. Literally all I really need of a git host is to support the git protocol, and to keep stuff around for me forever. I appreciate having pull requests, conversations, and what-not, but the #1 requirement is having my stuff there, reliably stored, and available to the world. I'll mention: I don't blame gitlab for a decision they didn't make. If you've ever worked in a corporation, you'll know a lot of stupid decisions ALMOST get made all the time. gitlab tends to be more open than other organizations, so we see the inner workings. I've always seen them pull back when a decision is particularly numbskull.
Bluecobra 4y ago
I use this small utility in Linux called mdump to test multicast on a semi regular basis. It does what it is supposed to and I never ran into any issues. I just happened to look at the source code again the other day and it was last updated in 1994!

nonethewiser 4y ago

> I've had open source projects be dormant for 10 years only to get a question pop up out of the blue from someone who found it useful. Seems like their new policy wont prohibit that though.

nicce 4y ago
It does since if you don’t touch the project aka it is dormant, it disappears. And nobody can know its existence and find it useful.

jonathanstrange 4y ago

It would also punish programming languages with good long-term support. For example, Ada has been deliberately designed for long-term maintainability. Many Ada packages haven't been modified for years because they are finished. They work as intended. Unless someone finds a bug, there is no need to update or change them. Not everybody considers constant feature creep desirable.

mytailorisrich 4y ago

The crux of the issue is that Gitlab is a commercial enterprise so at one point it is reasonable for them not to want to host dormant projects for free when it costs them money to do that. In fact, even if they weren't a commercial enterprise they would still need to balance the books in order to survive.