Orphanages For Abandoned Free Software?

flea asks: "I recently went on a fishing expedition for a command-line, GPL'd document encoder/decoder for the Palm's popular DOC format. Using Google, I found lots of references to the Palm-OS-HOWTO, and a smattering of other sites, each of which refer to one of about 5 e-mail addresses for the author of the program, and a single Web site. All of the e-mail bounced back to me, and the URL is invalid. I don't have an FTP server to host the project from, and don't consider myself a very benevolent dictator, so I'd like to find a home for the source. I know there's a mechanism in place for people who want to adopt abandoned projects, but what about those of us who simply want to set the basket on the doorstep in hopes that someone competent will take it under their wing (forgive the metaphor-mixing)? If nothing else, an ftp site that can be indexed by Google so that people can FIND the source for such projects would be better than the current state of affairs."

Comments

Orphanages

[www.sorehands.com]

If you don't have a place for abandoned software to go, it will live on the streets and steal.

This is how Polarbar Mailer came to be. Polarbar is a all java mailer that came from JStreet Mailer.

But generally, when a company goes under, the creditors think that the code is worth money. By the time they realize it's not, they can't find it anymore and everyone is gone.

Re:Orphanages

[shippo]

Its a lot worse with commercial software. I've had a few things over the years that I've had to simply stop using because no-one is maintaining the code any more, and the source code itself has not been released.

What was more annoying is that the reason for the program no longer working was trivial - usually an API change that can be fixed by 5 minutes work with the source and a recompile.

The worst case was when a network utility vendor who was good at updating all their code, (some had been in constant use for 7-8 years), sold everything to another vendor. This second vendor effectivly killed everything off, and when the new version of the host OS appeared a few months later not one of the tools would work on the then current version. Pity, as there were no real replacements for the majority of them.

some urls:

[eMBee]

UFO -- keeping track of unmaintained Free Software projects
DOOSS -- Database of Orphaned Open Source Software
orphansource.org -- The home for orphaned source code, programs, and software projects.
UFO -- Unmaintained Free software and Open source projects.
Trioxin -- A project to keep track of the status of Free Software projects.

greetings, eMBee.
--

Re:some urls:

[eMBee]

hmm, i forgot to give credit
if you look here you'll notice that i just pasted the links from there. thanks to Uwe Hermann for collecting them,
oh and the title to the top link should be "Unmaintained Free Software" and not UFO

(so much for proofreading)

greetings, eMBee.
--

SourceForge, Server51

[Rob Kaper]

and Server 51 (or is that officially dead now?) are great places to host the project.

Yes, you would have to put some effort into maintaining at least that infrastructure, but you could build a simple page where you ask for someone else to really take over the project.

Just because you would be hosting it, doesn't mean you are leading the project. As soon as a real, qualified leader stands up, you can simply turn over your small FTP/WWW site maintainance and everyone's happy.

Re:SourceForge, Server51

[Rob Kaper]

That should've said SourceForge and Server51... sorry!

are you looking for MakeDoc?

[woggo]

This is more of a response to the poster's initial concern than to the question in general.

If you're looking for the "free DOC encoder", it might be a little hard to find, because it got bought out by Aportis a few years ago. (For obvious reasons, they "encouraged" the author to stop distributing free software.) However, the GPL means that all distributed versions are still Free. Visit ftpsearch and look for makedoc7.cpp. Alternatively, it is included on the O'Reilly Palm book CD. (You can get ORA titles for ~40% off at bookpool, so this book and its CD is a pretty good deal.)


~wog

Re:are you looking for MakeDoc?

[Zurk]

and if he's looking for a palm based GPLed DOC encoder/decoder try mine :
http://zurk.sourceforge.net...its called ZDOC. should be d/lable from any of the palm sites too...i have around 4000 users.
yeah, a ftp archive with google search would be REALLY KEWL. please put one up! i've been whining to freshmeat for a loong time about it.

Re:are you looking for MakeDoc?

[A Big Gnu Thrush]

ZDOC never did much for me as far as Palm Doc readers goes. Though it has the worst name of any software ever released, CSpotRun is a high quality Doc reader that has been released under the GPL.

Re:are you looking for MakeDoc?

[flea]

Actually, I guess I should have noted that I DID find it (makedoc7.cpp). It's just took a _LONG_ time and about 100 google-found sites to actually locate it. Give it a try yourself; even searching for makedoc7.cpp doesn't lead you anywhere. By the way, site-scooper's home is where it's posted, with some mods to the original. It wouldn't compile for me, until I removed a check for an unsigned int being < 0. I'll be looking at some of those sites to see if I can make sure it finds a good home.

Maybe some day I'll have the time to actually learn c++. If it's not been adopted, then I'll use it and it's users as guinnee pigs.

Thanks for the help everyone!

Re:are you looking for MakeDoc?

[Zurk]

true to the former....i like the name tho. :). it was experimental and mainly showed how the algorithms for reading/writing compressed/uncompress/encrypted DOC files go. it was never meant to be anything more than a programmers toy. i couldnt be bothered to improve the UI since i mainly use it for beaming DOC files back and forth from PCs using the serial port...it does DOCtext conversion on the fly and its DOC handling routines are strictly standards conformant. cspot, aportis, tealdoc are actually geared towards end users. ZDOC never was (and still isnt). its the only one that shows the exact headers in a DOC file tho. and has a good DOC handler function set which can be copied for other GPL projects. plus it can handle PDB files from peanut press. the algorithm implementation & functionality is always (and always has been) more important to me than end user UI for all my free software projects.

Unmaintained Free Software

[CentrX]

It seems to me that "Unmaintained Free Software" at http://unmaintained.sourceforge.net/ is the most organized and most successful of the few "Orphaned Open-source" projects out there.

Chris Hagar

Palm Doc Creation

[dnay]

I ran into the same problem a few weeks ago trying to find this exact same utility. When I finaly found it, I decided to use it to create an export filter for AbiWord.

The development version of AbiWord currently has the capability to export PalmDoc format .pdb files.

www.abisource.com

If you do not want to download from the CVS, you can get the latest release (0.7.11) later this week (so I'm told ;-)

Source posted in this thread, moderated to

[flea]

I don't know why it's moderated down to 0, but I noticed that there were 4 posts below my threshold (don't have time or patience for trolls). But there was only 1 post that deserved to be moderated down, the others were valid points of view (one just said NO, but that's fine by me). I think the moderators are being a little crankey here. Note that this is a short GPLd program, and will not stir up any controversy like the MS Kerbose thing did.

Is it because it specifically addressed the problem of finding the program in question, and not the concept of free software? By that standard, this comment deserves to be moderated down, because it is about the moderation of posts here.

Great Browser Archive

[Cy Guy]

This was posted by another /. reader in regards to the Classic Browsers Given New Life thread


The other way of doing this of course, is simply to download and install the appropriate browser from the evolt.org browser archive at http://browsers.evolt.org/.