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Ettiquette For Restarting Abandoned Open Source Projects?

Posted by Cliff on from the avoiding-toe-steppage dept.

nicsterrr asks: "What does one do when a promising open source project stops dead with no word from the developer(s)? I have been considering contributing to a certain sorceforge hosted project over the past few months, but unfortunately all development seems to have stopped and the main developer has vanished (from the internet at least). I understand that the GPL states that GPL source code can be used in derived work if the licence is unchanged, but I am hesitant just to 'hijack' the work done by (it seems) just one person, without first having an understanding of what his thoughts are first. In addition, there are almost no supporting comments in the code, and no separate developer documentation. What would you do in this situation if you were interested in furthering the undocumented, unfinished, and currently abandoned work (which at first glance seems to have potential) of someone else, and your attempts to contact them have been in vain?"

6 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Fork you! by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What you're essentially doing is creating a development fork, with the original "tine" not being developed.

    I suppose you should take some time and try and contact the original developers, and see if you can get an official go-ahead. But if you can't, go right ahead.

    In the worst case, if the original maintainers come back and cause such a stink about your taking over the project, they can take what you produced and merge or develop their own fork.

    1. Re:Fork you! by photon317 · · Score: 5, Insightful


      Of course, when you think about it, there's really not much reason to go about it that way. If what you intend to do is take over a seemingly-abandoned project, it's more politically correct to start a new project "based on", and essentially you've got a new fork and the old code-base stays stale. On your project page put some big shiny info and links to the old project and state that it seems to be derelict and you're trying to replace it and keep yours up to date or whatever.

      Eventually Google pageranking will start bringing you up on searches for their project anways as you supplant them in relevance - and most importantly if/when they come back to life they won't feel violated like they would if you had taken over the main branch of the product, original name and all, and named yourself head honcho.

      --
      11*43+456^2
    2. Re:Fork you! by PD · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If the original maintainers come back and raise a stink you can tell them to screw off. It's not polite to give people permission to take the source and fork it, and then to complain when people do just that.

      --
      If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
  2. was it abandoned... by zogger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Was it really abandoned or did the guy have something happen to him in meatworld? I mean it could be anything, got locked up, got sick, moved to ubangiland, anything. With that said, here's one solution, you can fork it immediately,get to work on it,and if/when the original guy shows back up,contact him and either agree to rejoin efforts-or not.

  3. It doesn't matter by noz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is within your right under tha authors' chosen license that you may modify the source and make it publically available (which it must be :)).

    I personally think it's great you're concerned with etiquette, but the author is uncontactable. If he contacts you in the future with concerns about your work, it appears you already have the manners to listen to him, at any time.

    Good luck. :)

  4. Re:Eric Raymond by hswerdfe · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From your article:

    The third way to acquire ownership of a project is to observe that it needs work and the owner has disappeared or lost interest. If you want to do this, it is your responsibility to make the effort to find the owner. If you don't succeed, then you may announce in a relevant place (such as a Usenet newsgroup dedicated to the application area) that the project appears to be orphaned, and that you are considering taking responsibility for it.

    /. would have been a good start. to bad he didn't state the name of the project. I am willing to bet someone who reads, would know the maintainer.

    silly silly people

    post a link to the actual dead project!

    --
    --meh--