

Abandoned open source projects - jkreeftmeijer
http://jeffkreeftmeijer.com/2010/abandoned-open-source-projects/

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kaens
This would be a great feature. I have some projects floating around in various
places that I haven't worked on in years, some of them very stupid looking
back at them, and all of them not incredibly high in code-quality.

I still get support requests or requests for advice once in a while from
people trying to use them, or thinking of hacking on them -- and these aren't
even close to being popular projects.

I'm doing most of my open development on github these days, and this would
mesh extremely well with the way that git hub, and more generally DVCS works.

Another possible nicety would be the ability to mark a repo as the "canonical"
repo for a project. Right now that kinda happens with forks on github, but if
a project is abandoned, and another person picks up maintenance on it, it
would be nice to be able to say "this isn't the current repo anymore, look
here instead" in a manner that isn't just putting a notice somewhere.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
I think the new organizations feature of Github is an excellent way to address
the need for a "canonical" repository. The fact that you can define an org for
each open source project or group, and then add other users as admins
mitigates the problems if the project changes hands, or gains a new primary
maintainer. Just add the new "owner" as an admin for the group/repo, and
nobody needs to be the wiser.

~~~
foca
Yeah, but adding a whole organization for each open source repo? I have tons
of small gems/libraries that solve one specific problem, and all enjoy their
share of users/

I don't want to setup a bunch of organizations just because they might change
owners at some point in the future.

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kneath
Thanks for your suggestion, I always love reading detailed descriptions of
what people would like from GitHub. However, now I've got a bit of a question
for you...

My opinion is that every extra field I add to a page means I've personally
failed. It's so easy to correlate databases to HTML that people often go
feature-crazy adding fields to solve their problems and you end up with a
product like JIRA.

However, as a designer I'm directly opposed to this idea. Every field I add to
a web application torments me. I think about it constantly and scheme for
hours trying to come up with any alternative to adding another field. I've
been known to dream about "simply adding another field" for weeks. I need to
make sure that this field is really going to positively impact my users. That
it's more important than any other field already on the page.

So, would this inactive/status flag provide a significant benefit over editing
the name/description/readme? I guess that's the question I'd like you guys to
think about.

~~~
PStamatiou
could something like this be done automatically? No commits in X months leads
to auto-abandoned + fires off email to owner asking them to commit something
to unabandon it if they want.

~~~
gus_massa
The (current) last update of TeX is from March 2008. The idea is that it is
stable, not abandoned.

~~~
_delirium
That's partly because Knuth's TeX is more the core of a piece of software than
the software itself; actual distributions of TeX get much more frequent
maintenance, and would bitrot without it. For example, the last commit to
texlive (the TeX distribution most Linux users use) was 20 minutes ago:
<http://www.tug.org/svn/texlive/trunk/>

------
danskil
interesting idea, though in keeping away from feature bloat, wouldn't it be
much much easier, and just as effective to put that information in the read
me?

I realize the you said they don't want to but the info there, but why? If you
really wanted to abandon the project why not just close the repo, which would
shift all your traffic to another fork?

If github implemented this feature, I wouldn't be upset, but it seems very
single purpose. Maybe a status flag, so the author can not just say
"abandoned", but "up to date", or "active" though again, all of that can be
seen through the commit history.

Just my 2 cents.

~~~
cookiecaper
I agree that while this is a good idea, Github probably has bigger fish to fry
and that at this point it should do fine to put the notice at the top of the
README.

Perhaps someone can add the feature to the open-source Gitorious.

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xtho
I don't think it's a good idea to make this dependent on github. The README or
VERSION file could contain a note about the project status/quality: "version
1.2 -- abandoned". Simply creating an empty file named ABANDONED would work
too for people who don't use github.

~~~
technomancy
Indeed. What would be a nice addition to github is a way to mark another
repository as the canonical one. I've been lucky enough to have a couple of my
old projects taken over by new maintainers, and it takes a while for people to
realize it.

~~~
Corrado
I think that Github will re-root a repository if you ask them.

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aerique
I'm generally not so sensitive about this but that article is annoying to read
for me because of the font you've used (or the effects you've applied to it).

Good idea for abandoned projects however.

~~~
jkreeftmeijer
What browser/OS are you using? Can you send me a screenshot of the problem?
That'd make it easier to fix it. :)

~~~
aerique
Okey, like I said yesterday it was my fault. Apologies. I have unchecked the
box "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above".

This is the first time it bites me in the ass though! It produces a shadow and
lighting effect on the letters which is really distracting:
<http://imgur.com/qYkeh.png>

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tomazmuraus
Yes, the ability for the user to set the repository status to "abandoned"
would be great.

I don't like the other idea about automatically setting the repository status
to abandoned if it hasn't been updated for a while, because it's not necessary
that project has been abandoned, because there were no code / repository
updates recently.

------
generalk
I think it's a fantastic idea. I've oftentimes looked at the last commit date
on a project and thought "Okay, is this abandoned, or has the owner just not
pushed in a while?"

Github might also offer the ability to indicate the new canonical repository,
for the case where the original dev has stopped working on the project but
other folks have picked it up.

~~~
eelco
That problem will not go away, instead you'll have a new one: "Okay, is this
abandoned and did the owner forget to mark it as such?"

------
foca
I don't think this is necessary. The solution is to go to your project's
mailing list, irc room, ask your twitter followers, or whatever, and ask for a
new maintainer. Even messaging the users who actively report issues can be a
good idea.

Once you have a new maintainer, announce it, open a support request in
<http://support.github.com> asking them to re-root the network to the new
maintainer's fork, and then change the description of your repo (a one click
change) to something like "this is no longer maintainer, check
<http://github.com/otheruser/repo>

Yes, it takes a while, but then when you solve it, you give the community a
new maintainer. So I think it's a better solution than just marking it as
abandoned :)

------
rwhitman
If anything its a level of convenience that I would definitely support.

Nothing is more frustrating than working with a piece of code (in my case
usually a Django app), get giddy about using it and then realize that it
hasn't been maintained in over a year and is littered with bugs you need to
fix.

I actually think some sort of "no commits after X amount of time" warning /
flag would work just as well. In fact, it might actually encourage people to
maintain more projects if only to prevent the warning from popping up. Heck
you could even turn it into a game...

