Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Author: JT Smith
Author: JT Smith
In the Christmas classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Rudolph and company stumble on an island of misfit toys, which nobody wants to play with anymore. Well, there’s also an island of orphaned free software, called Unmaintained Free Software.
Just like in the classic, free software-related packages that have become orphaned or unmaintained sit here and dream of a new owner or maintainer. A orphaned project can happen for a number of reasons: Projects become obsolete, the maintainer losses interest or lacks the knowledge or time to see the project to fruition. In fact, the site offers links to article that can tell you “Why do Free Software projects fail?” or “How to Write Unmaintainable Code,” a tutorial of how not to write your code.
Unmaintained Free Software
The brain child of Uwe Hermann, Unmaintained Free Software’s first incarnation in 1999 was called Unmaintained Linux. “I saw several projects which weren’t actively developed or even ‘officially’ declared dead,” Herman says. “This bugged me as I didn’t like the idea that all the work and time spent on those projects should be wasted. Therefore, I wanted to create an index of such unmaintained projects where other developers could take over ‘dead’ projects and continue developing them.” Today the site does just that, indexing all unmaintained free software-related content it can find or is submitted and helps find new maintainers/developers.
Among items indexed on the site are software sources, patches, and binary packages; several types of documentation; bug lists; wish lists; and to-do lists.
Currently, there are 38 applications on the Web site, broken down into subcategories like business, documentation, games, and graphics. On the site you can find an orphaned app for an old Asteroid game clone, an X window manager derived from twm, or a Win32 system-tray CD player. “All projects on the site start out with a status of ‘unmaintained’ or ‘obsolete,'” says Hermann. “If and when they find a new maintainer, they are marked as ‘maintained.'” To date, eight of the 38 applications have been picked up.
Information on each project is listed by category. Licenses, downloads, homepages and a brief description on each app are available.
The Buzz
This summer Hermann announced the site on Kuro5hin and since then the site has been mentioned/announced on several other tech sites, including this endorsement from Slashdot: “A very good idea that I’m pleased to see implemented. There’s a lot of orphaned software out there … some of it because it’s pretty
useless, but others just because people move on. Hopefully a site like this can help us breath life back into the good ones.”
Others singing the praises of the site include those developers who have picked up and maintained a projects on the site. “I think that the Web site offers a really good service to the Open Source community,” explains Stefanos Zachariadis, a final year Computer Science undergraduate in England. “Developers do not have to re-invent the wheel and lines of code are not wasted. Service was great, I got in touch with the old project maintainer, agreed to take on the project, and then I just notified
unmaintained.sourceforge.net’s webmaster/maintainer and he had the page updated. That’s all!”
“Sites such as the one at http://unmaintained.sourceforge.net/ are particularly useful for the Open Source community, I believe,” says Cameron McCormack, who has taken over development of zicq on the site. “I know that personally I’ve started many pieces of software, only to either lose interest in them or to find myself without enough time to continue work on them. The time that has already been committed to the unfinished projects can be spared from waste by letting others use the code, and become maintainer of the project.”
He adds: “In my case, the site has proved to be particularly helpful. Work on zicq seemed to have stopped, and I couldn’t find any sites on the program on the Web. Rather than fork the project (perhaps unnecessarily if the project was still being worked on out of the limelight), I was able to take over the project after seeing the message on the Unmaintained Software site.”
A home for every toy, errr, open project
In the classic Christmas story, Santa comes to the rescue and finds homes for all the orphaned toys. In this story, Hermann realizes the importance of the site isn’t merely to find a maintainer for all orphaned projects, but simply offer a resource for developers to draw on. “The site needs some more polishing and fixing,” he says. “Then I might make the site theme able and customizable. And a feature I’d like to see implemented soon, is that downloads and site views of the different projects are tracked. This allows you to find out which projects
most people are interested in.”
McCormack goes a step further: “Another use for the site is ideas! Sometimes you’ll be wanting to work on
some software project, yet have no idea what to do. This ‘coder’s block’ is, in fact, what I had before I started work on zicq. It was useful to have a list of entire projects which were orphaned and needed work on, rather than simply some list of actively maintained projects with a ‘to do’ list.”
(Disclosure: SourceForge, where Unmaintained Free Software is hosted, is a sister site of NewsForge’s.)
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Author: JT Smith
Category:
Author: JT Smith
Author: JT Smith
By hosting a series of tightly focused developer-to-developer (D2D)
events, the OSDN Developer Services Program will facilitate communication
and cooperation between Open Source software developers, vendors and
users working in key technology areas.
OSDN’s first Database Summit will feature speakers representing some
of the leading Open Source database projects, including David Axmark
and Monty Widenius of MySQL AB; D. Britton Johnston, CTO of NuSphere;
PostgreSQL developers Bruce Momjian and Tom Lane of Great Bridge;
InterBase co-founder Ann Harrison, president of IBPhoenix; and Berkeley
DB developers Michael Olson and Michael Udell of Sleepycat Software.
“The overwhelmingly positive response to the Open Source Printing
Summit sponsored by VA Linux and HP earlier this year inspired us
to offer similar events through OSDN,” said John “Tiberius” Hall,
vice president of strategic planning, VA Linux Systems. “The OSDN web
sites offer the leading online resource for Open Source developers, but
it’s also important for developers to meet and interact face to face.
By facilitating these meetings, we’ll be helping to further accelerate
Open Source software development.”
OSDN’s goal is to provide Open Source community programs to support
development in key technology areas for Open Source, as well as
outreach programs to introduce individuals and businesses to Open Source
development methodologies and the benefits of Open Source solutions.
Future OSDN Developer Services events will cover key topics such
as security, network management and graphics programming. Further
information on the Open Source Database Summit and other conferences and
events organized by OSDN is available at http://www.osdn.com/conferences.
About OSDN
OSDN (Open Source Development Network), a division of VA Linux Systems,
Inc., is the leading Linux and Open Source destination on the Internet.
OSDN is a network and community outreach organization committed to
accelerating Open Source software development, which also serves as a
gateway for individuals and organizations worldwide to understand and join
this revolution. Serving over 80 million page impressions to more than
3 million users each month, OSDN includes the leading Open Source sites
for news, information and discussion (Slashdot, NewsForge and Linux.com),
the largest sites for collaborative Open Source development and support
(SourceForge and QuestionExchange), the most popular sites for software
distribution (Freshmeat and Themes.org), online shopping for technical
enthusiasts (ThinkGeek), a new print publication (Open magazine), and
community discussion forums and personalized content on the beta site
for OSDN.com.
Certain statements in this press release, including statements relating
to future events and benefits of the OSDN Developer Services Program and
future growth in Open Source software development, are forward-looking
statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause
results to be materially different from expectations. Such risks and
uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the company’s ability
to negotiate, close and implement agreements with event sponsors;
continued third-party support for OSDN; competition with larger and
more established companies; the company’s ability to attract and retain
qualified personnel; industry trends in Linux and Open Source; and other
risks detailed in VA Linux’s filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission, copies of which may be accessed through the SEC’s web site
at www.sec.gov.
Note: VA Linux Systems, OSDN, SourceForge, Slashdot, Freshmeat,
QuestionExchange, ThinkGeek and NewsForge are trademarks of VA Linux
Systems, Inc. NuSphere is a trademark of NuSphere Corporation. MySQL is
a trademark of MySQL AB. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus
Torvalds. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Author: JT Smith
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