4 ms·

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 pr

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.

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.