Re: What to do with a dead upstream popular application (IceWm)
"Sean 'Shaleh' Perry" <shalehperry@attbi.com> writes:
>>
>> I maintain icewm (-gnome, -lite and -experimental) and it is dead
>> upstream since last October. The latest upstream author (there have
>> been two developers) recently announced he does not intend to
>> continue the project.
>>
>
> I recently ran into this with blackbox. My approach was to take over the
> upstream and make this my main hacking project. Definately not for everyone.
I recently wanted to know what was happening on the blackbox from and
saw your name, although you are not in the developers' list. Now I
know why ...
>
> My experience with projects that lose their main hackers are that one of two
> things happen. Either everyone eventually says "you know there is something
> better over here" or someone stands up and takes the reins. I presume you are
> on the icewm lists, perhaps you can agitate for someone or a group of someones
> to rekindle the project. If there are a few of you no one need bear all of
> the burden.
You're right. There are many people interested in icewm as users but
not as developers. As I said previously, we tried to hack a bit on it but
we realized that the code was dirty and not very easy to understand.
Although I don't want to hack on the current codebase, I would volonteer
on starting from scratch a full-compatible icewm clone, and well
documented this time. And I think I have enough motivation ofr this.
>
> If you do not want to use the package any more you should abandon it. Let
> someone else who cares deal with it. As myself and others have said before,
> one of Debian's key strengths is that the people doing the work are doing it
> because they want to and enjoy it not because they feel they have to or their
> bosses force them to.
It saddens me, really. And I don't like the idea of letting our users on their
own ...
--
Jérôme Marant <jerome@marant.org>
<jerome.marant@free.fr>
http://marant.org
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