5 ms·
Ask HN: How many open source projects lack a succession plan?
When I read through the Google Groups post by Christian Bradandt about the future of the vim project[1] the picture it painted is that Bram had no idea his days on this mortal coil were almost. It seems there wasn't a succession or continuity of operations plan in place, leaving the project leaders with the unsavory task of having to ask the grieving family members to turn over access keys, domains, etc.
How common is it for an open source project to have a defined continuity plan and should the presence of one -- and that it's updated -- be considered a sine non qua before financial donations are made to the project?
[1] https://groups.google.com/g/vim_dev/c/dq9Wu5jqVTw
- h2odragon 3y agoThe succession plan is "you want it to keep going, you maintain a fork"; at worst. Requiring something more to your tastes (or other demands on the governance style) seems to be asking a bit much. If you want "this project but run differently" then the open source license is there to give you the freedom to run your version that way.
- bruce511 3y agoYou are not wrong, the code can be forked, and it just continues. Ideally, of course, there will be just one fork not multiple people competing to be the next top dog. Other aspects of the product are somewhat harder. Things like forums, mailing lists, trademarks, graphics, logos, websites, domains and so on all form part of the "whole" and these are less-easy, or impossible, to duplicate. So yes, if you are a object owner, there are advantages to having others with "keys to the kingdom". Of course this comes with risks, so at the least a nominated successor and instructions on how to get them control of the various assets. I've been tangentially involved with cases like this, and in non-income cases spouses have generally been helpful - they like the idea of the project being kept alive. Having a plan is a big part of continuity, and I encourage solo developers, and project leads, to build and publicise the plan.
- cratermoon 3y agoThomas Buchler and TropeTrainer: https://www.inverse.com/input/features/tropetrainer-thomas-buchler-torah-software https://www.inverse.com/input/features/tropetrainer-thomas-b... "TropeTrainer was software that had been taught to sing the words of God. Then it went silent."
- warrenm 3y agoI recall fear over Slackware back when Patrick was very ill several years ago (Thankfully, he recovered) The best way for any even modestly-successful project to continue after the loss of any part of its leadership is to not be singly-maintained Unfortunately, there seems to always be some random guy in Nebraska[0] doing thankless work no one knows about ... until he does not -------- [0] https://xkcd.com/2347 https://xkcd.com/2347
- simne 3y agoAs I know, very large fraction of Open Source project made without any plan at all. Many, just for fun, some, for marketing reasons (as point to show in CV or some outsource companies does them to show how they code). So, when fun ended, those projects become orphans. Very few projects are in reality, daughters of big corporations (or Non Government Organizations, for charity), or just community version of some commercial project - they sure have some business plan of their future operations. But I think share of such projects less than 10%. For about donations decision, I mostly see two opposite considerations: 1) "I will only pay to big charity organization, because I see there strong bureaucracy culture, which will not allow them to just steal money"; 2) "I will NOT pay to big bureaucracy organization, because I see there large costs spent to just this bureaucracy, not to work, so I'll pay to separate people or to small organization, where I see working people and don't see bureaucracy". And for about continuity, I think, for most projects enough to choose right license, I think the best is MIT/BSD, because it allow to easy make clone and even to make commercial clone, while GPL made cloning very complicated. So, if your project have MIT/BSD (or similar) license, you don't need to think much about continuity - anybody could take your project and keep it going if need. But if you choose GPL or similar, you MUST take care about continuity.