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There are many arguments for FOSS. This isn’t one of them. Plenty of open source apps are abandoned. The maintainers get tired, too busy, or whatever. Few use

by jzb 3y ago

There are many arguments for FOSS. This isn’t one of them. Plenty of open source apps are abandoned. The maintainers get tired, too busy, or whatever. Few users, if any, are depending on this app that hasn’t been getting attention for years. There’s plenty of replacement apps as good or better, including FOSS ones. If it was open source, the odds are no one would care to take over maintenance (though they could) since it’s basically redundant at this point.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
On the contrary, the difference is precisely that an abandoned FOSS program can be picked up by someone else; that this ability is not always used is beside the point.
- no_wizard 3y ago
  Not always is a misnomer. It rarely if ever is. Anyone remember PhantomJS? It took years before a replacement emerged and nobody was willing to take in the project, and this was a critical piece of tech at the time
  - gaganyaan 3y ago
    Rarely isn't a good term either. I use a fair number of open source apps that were picked up by a different maintainer after the original one got bored. I have no idea what the overall rate is, but it works well enough for me. Maybe PhantomJS wasn't as critical as you thought it was? Or maybe the JS ecosystem doesn't lend itself towards this model because JS developers have the attention span of a goldfish
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    > It rarely if ever is. You can always pay someone to maintain it. Not every thing has to be free.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - emodendroket 3y ago
      Let's try and bring this back to the original example. If WordPad cost money who would use it and not one of the much more robust competitors?
      - ben-schaaf 3y ago
        It does cost money. Windows licenses aren't free.
        emodendroket 3y ago
        Electricity and computer hardware costs money so therefore no software is free and we can wrap up the whole discussion.
        bitvoid 3y ago
        That's a false equivalency and you know it. When I pay for electricity and computer hardware, that money doesn't go to any software developer. When I pay for a Windows license, that money goes to Microsoft who maintain WordPad.
        emodendroket 3y ago
        No, I don’t think it is. They’re throwing in something for free when you buy Windows.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > It rarely if ever is. It happens all the time. But when it happens it's so transparent that nobody even notices. There are many 30+ year old open source applications still in use. How many of the current maintainers are still the original developers?
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    I had a copy and made changes to my fork when others stopped updating. Having a copy let me make changes that work for me. Running a replacement foss project is totally different beast and the time/effect involved is a lot different nevermind the marketing/rebrand required
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    AnythingJS is not a good example. There are as many JS frameworks as there are js developers.
- antoniojtorres 3y ago
  Just because it can does not mean that is.
badsectoracula 3y ago
> Plenty of open source apps are abandoned. The maintainers get tired, too busy, or whatever. Other people can pick up the baton. For example my window manager of choice is Window Maker which was abandoned for literally years (fortunately since the underlying tech doesn't change every other month, it still kept working) before someone else it picked it up and nowadays there are a few developers working on it. > If it was open source, the odds are no one would care to take over maintenance (though they could) since it’s basically redundant at this point. When Microsoft opensourced winfile[0] (the file manager from Win3.x/NT 3.x) some developers did flock to it (i personally even added a small feature to allow for multiple file masks which was merged), so i'm pretty sure the same would happen for an opensourced wordpad. [0] https://github.com/microsoft/winfile https://github.com/microsoft/winfile
- johannes1234321 3y ago
  Taking over write isn't really hard. It is not a complex app. The core is the rich text edit control from Windows. Writing a comparable application from "scratch" using the controls isn't a huge task and there are plenty comparable programs. (The full OLE capability needs a bit tweaking to get it working right, if one needs it)

by jzb 3y ago

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

On the contrary, the difference is precisely that an abandoned FOSS program can be picked up by someone else; that this ability is not always used is beside the point.

no_wizard 3y ago
Not always is a misnomer. It rarely if ever is. Anyone remember PhantomJS? It took years before a replacement emerged and nobody was willing to take in the project, and this was a critical piece of tech at the time
- gaganyaan 3y ago
  Rarely isn't a good term either. I use a fair number of open source apps that were picked up by a different maintainer after the original one got bored. I have no idea what the overall rate is, but it works well enough for me. Maybe PhantomJS wasn't as critical as you thought it was? Or maybe the JS ecosystem doesn't lend itself towards this model because JS developers have the attention span of a goldfish
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > It rarely if ever is. You can always pay someone to maintain it. Not every thing has to be free.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    Let's try and bring this back to the original example. If WordPad cost money who would use it and not one of the much more robust competitors?
    - ben-schaaf 3y ago
      It does cost money. Windows licenses aren't free.
      - emodendroket 3y ago
        Electricity and computer hardware costs money so therefore no software is free and we can wrap up the whole discussion.
        bitvoid 3y ago
        That's a false equivalency and you know it. When I pay for electricity and computer hardware, that money doesn't go to any software developer. When I pay for a Windows license, that money goes to Microsoft who maintain WordPad.
        emodendroket 3y ago
        No, I don’t think it is. They’re throwing in something for free when you buy Windows.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > It rarely if ever is. It happens all the time. But when it happens it's so transparent that nobody even notices. There are many 30+ year old open source applications still in use. How many of the current maintainers are still the original developers?
- ipaddr 3y ago
  I had a copy and made changes to my fork when others stopped updating. Having a copy let me make changes that work for me. Running a replacement foss project is totally different beast and the time/effect involved is a lot different nevermind the marketing/rebrand required
- prmoustache 3y ago
  AnythingJS is not a good example. There are as many JS frameworks as there are js developers.
antoniojtorres 3y ago
Just because it can does not mean that is.

badsectoracula 3y ago

> Plenty of open source apps are abandoned. The maintainers get tired, too busy, or whatever. Other people can pick up the baton. For example my window manager of choice is Window Maker which was abandoned for literally years (fortunately since the underlying tech doesn't change every other month, it still kept working) before someone else it picked it up and nowadays there are a few developers working on it. > If it was open source, the odds are no one would care to take over maintenance (though they could) since it’s basically redundant at this point. When Microsoft opensourced winfile[0] (the file manager from Win3.x/NT 3.x) some developers did flock to it (i personally even added a small feature to allow for multiple file masks which was merged), so i'm pretty sure the same would happen for an opensourced wordpad. [0] https://github.com/microsoft/winfile https://github.com/microsoft/winfile

johannes1234321 3y ago
Taking over write isn't really hard. It is not a complex app. The core is the rich text edit control from Windows. Writing a comparable application from "scratch" using the controls isn't a huge task and there are plenty comparable programs. (The full OLE capability needs a bit tweaking to get it working right, if one needs it)