Unmaintained Free Software:Forum

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Welcome to the Unmaintained Free Software forum. You can use this wiki page for any discussions, suggestions, feature requests etc.

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Contents

When is a project unmaintained?

I would like to inquire when exactly a project is to be considered "unmaintained" in the sense of this Wiki. In my opinion, there is a number of different "unmaintained" states that need to be defined. I'll try to define some states, and would apprecaite if the Wiki would develop a page defining the different states of "unmaintained" and would state which levels qualify for inclusion here and which don't.

  • Dead
    • No Web page available
    • No visible development
    • All links to mailing lists point to dead mailing lists
    • Web page says "this software is unmaintained"
  • Technically alive
    • Project has a web page
    • No visible development
    • Developers answers to e-mails, but do not intend to work on the program in the near future
    • Mailing lists work
    • Examples
  • Bug-fix only
    • Package taken care of a commercial entity
    • No visible development besides critical bug fixes
    • These bug fixes are usually done by different people at all
    • No wishlist items or features added for a long time
    • Examples

This classification is more than a little bit rough, but I hope it is a start for a good scheme.

I begin to think that "unmaintained" isn't the quite right word here, since a lot of the software I am painfully missing features in is actually maintained, but development is kind of stalled nevertheless. Maybe "Work-Needing Free Software" would have been a better name, but it's probably too late for this.

-- Marc 'Zugschlus' Haber

Hi Marc, there's a small blurb on when a project is considered unmaintained in the FAQ, but I agree that a more formal classification would be better. I'll add a respective page soon and also comment a bit more on your suggestions (I'm a bit short on time right now). Thanks for your post and your ideas, keep up the good work! --Uwe Hermann 21:28, 8 Aug 2005 (CEST)

Thanks

  • Hi Uwe. Thank you very much for doing this! Please give people like me (who would like to send you cheers) a special page. :) However I hope that none of the projects I am involved in will ever be listed here (at least as long as I live ;) ). bye Robert Schuster (helps at GNU Classpath and maintains his pet project Freefodder)
    • Hi, thanks for your support. Feel free to use this forum as the "special page" you talked about. I added your wiki to the Press Review page, thanks for linking us. --Uwe Hermann 18:49, 27 Apr 2005 (CEST)

"Unmaintained" template

  • Could someone fix the "Template:Unmaintained" template to use includeonly on the category link - I made an example at it's discussion page to show how this works. Doing this keeps the template itself from being included to the category. Triona 09:09, 16 January 2007 (CET)
    • Fixed in all templates, thanks! --Uwe Hermann 16:35, 16 January 2007 (CET)

Make it possible to suggest software

  • I think that many people know one or two projects which are a long time without a update. But not everybody want to create a account here and setup a wikipage. It would be nice to have one site where people can make a kind of "suggestions" without creating a account. --Maduser 14:09, 30 January 2007 (CET)
    • I have enabled editing possibilities for anonymous users for now. Let's see what happens -- if the spammers return in masses I might have to disable it again. Suggestions for projects can be added to the todo list, for example. --Uwe Hermann 18:42, 30 January 2007 (CET)
      • Our project template system became quite complex. This might probably scare new editors off. I like the idea of the Special:Upload form. We might create something like this for adding new pages. Matt 18:58, 30 January 2007 (CET)
        • I don't think they're too complex. The current template is easier to use and understand than ever before, IHMO. --Uwe Hermann 22:06, 30 January 2007 (CET)
      • Is there no possiblty that only one site can be edit by anonymous users?--Maduser 19:14, 30 January 2007 (CET)
        • Hm, not easily, but right now all pages are accessible so that shouldn't be a problem. --Uwe Hermann 22:06, 30 January 2007 (CET)
          • In my experience with MediaWiki is the discusion site of the main page the which most spamed. Maybe protect this site help reduce spaming. --Maduser 12:39, 31 January 2007 (CET)
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