

Jamis Buck lets go of Capistrano - sofal
http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2009/2/25/net-ssh-capistrano-and-saying-goodbye

======
tptacek
This seems a lot healthier and more mature than the industry standard approach
towards abandoned open source projects, which is absentee landlordism. He's
giving people opportunity and the clear signal that it's OK to fork the
project.

~~~
jmtulloss
I think Github will really help that situation. The problem with traditional
open source projects is that somebody can control who contributes back, and if
that person isn't around, the project dies. Sure you can fork, but there's no
way for others to keep track of where the project has gone to. When this
happens, it tends to just acquire a new name and become something else.

Github solves all these problems. Github rocks.

~~~
there
> but there's no way for others to keep track of where the project has gone to

so now instead of searching around for the project's new homepage, you have to
search through dozens of forks each with one or two bugfixes or random changes
and find out which one is the most actively maintained?

i'm all for git's concept of forking to make your own development easier, but
unless you merge your fixes back into a mainline distribution, it's just
stupid and creates confusion for everyone else relying on that software.

say you want to run a script that someone has written that uses net-ssh. until
now you could be assured that they wrote it using the official net-ssh ruby
module and it will work with the one you have installed. so from now on you'll
have to install the random net-ssh version that someone has stashed away on
his github account? and what happens when that particular fork of net-ssh
stops getting maintained? someone else forks it and now you have to install a
different version?

what about the security ramifications of using some random person's fork of an
ssh module that you are entrusting to login to your servers? would you install
a forked version of openssh from an unknown source on your server or would you
rather get it from a known, trusted source?

~~~
DocSavage
I made a Rails authorization plugin a while ago that has a small following.
After I moved to App Engine for my web programming, I recruited two commiters
who know what they're doing and made them "Repository Collaborators" with
admin privileges, so my repo on the original page continues to be the main
repo.

I'm not sure that's the best solution now that I am effectively an absentee
landlord. The main repo is under my account and I get included in pull
requests. It would be great if Github has a repo forwarding feature or trusted
forks could be listed on the Project Page (just saw that). What's the best way
to leave it in other hands?

~~~
ivey
Let the community decide. The forks with the most activity will start be
obvious on the network graph.

------
jupiter
He probably doesn't imagine just for how many people he made life easier every
day. Great job, props and good luck for whatever is coming next!

------
mpk
Well, this sounds like a good opportunity for me to mention an alternative
deployment tool with a cooler name : Vlad the Deployer.

<http://rubyhitsquad.com/Vlad_the_Deployer.html>

~~~
larrywright
I would have had a lot more respect for Vlad if the developers hadn't acted
like complete jerks about it: <http://rubyhitsquad.com/Ruby_Hit_Squad.html>

Building a competing tool because you think you can do it better is fine.
Building a competing tool because you want to take a different approach is
also fine. Being rude isn't fine, and shouldn't be tolerated in any community.

~~~
richcollins
== SPECIAL THANKS:

* First, of course, to Capistrano. For coming up with the idea and providing a lot of meat for the recipes.

<http://github.com/fs/vlad/tree/master>

~~~
larrywright
That's nice, but I don't think it makes up for how they attacked it. PJ Hyett
(of GitHub fame) even commented on it at the time:
<http://www.pjhyett.com/posts/224-how-not-to-open-source>

------
mikeryan
Actually after his last announcement of no longer supporting Windows for
Capistrano and Net::SSH this will hopefully be a good thing, assuming the
community picks it up. Would be nice if he could find a designated maintainer
but either way I doubt these projects will go to the wayside.

Wish I had the time I'd contribute more and props to Jamis for the great
tools.

------
henning
At least, because it's free software, the users have the source and can use
that to migrate to alternatives or carry on the projects without him.

------
100k
When acts_as_solr was abandoned by its old maintainer, there was a lot of
confusion about what to do with the code. Unfortunately, no one was named as
the maintainer of the project, and no one could push to the official
repository. It didn't help that the code was moved to GitHub with git newbie
problems, like directories not being in the repo, that stopped it from working
out of the box.

Eventually, things sorted themselves out (here's the maintainers' fork:
<http://github.com/mattmatt/acts_as_solr/tree/master>) but there are still
frequent questions on the mailing list asking why the plugin doesn't work. It
would have been better to name a maintainer who could manage things.

I hope Capistrano can avoid these problems.

------
MikeBailey
Capistrano is mature and stable. Jamis deserves respect for the original idea
and the implementation.

For the vast majority of people, the current version will work just fine. When
we all get sick of git and start using the next source control system then
Capistrano will need support for that but I can't see that happening anytime
soon.

Massive thanks to Jamis for all the love he's given to these projects over the
last few years.

------
jballanc
So long and thanks for all the fish^H^H^H^H AWESOME SOFTWARE!

------
Harkins
"Lets go" is not an accurate title, "abandons" would be a better word.

He's written good code and it sucks that he's burning out, but it's not cool
to ignore questions and not even try to find a maintainer. Capistrano is used
by nearly every Rails project, abandoning it is grossly irresponsible.

~~~
jamis
Why is it "grossly irresponsible" of me to take this action? Are lives going
to be lost or injured as a result? Will the economy suffer? Will my leaving
this project result in a health epidemic?

I've never made any promises about the project. I never claimed that I would
be around for ever. I never said I would ignore questions, either -- just that
I would ignore emails sent directly to me. But I'm going to remain on the
mailing list, and will remain about as responsive there as I have (and I'm, by
far, the most frequest poster there).

~~~
Harkins
Because a lot of people relied on you and you left them hanging. You can beat
up on the straw man about killing people, but ditching the project isn't cool.

~~~
larrywright
Sure it is. Jamis did this work for free, he doesn't owe you or anyone else
any of his time to continue to maintain an application that he has burned out
on.

Open source software gets abandoned _all the time_. This is only being
discussed here because Jamis took the gentleman's approach and informed
everyone that he was stepping down.

People say there isn't an entitlement mentality amongst people these days, but
this kind of reaction is pretty compelling evidence that there is.

