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Ask Slashdot: Attracting Developers To Abandonware?
phlawed writes "I've been a Linux user since the previous millennium. I came from OS/2, which I really liked. I quickly felt at home with icewm, using a suitably tweaked config to give me something resembling Presentation Manager. I may have commented on that before. Today, I find myself in a position where my preferred 'environment' is eroding. The only force keeping icewm rolling these days is the distribution package maintainers. I can't code in any meaningful way, nor do I aspire to. I could easily pay for a supported version of icewm, but I can't personally pay someone enough to keep it alive. I'd love it if someone took a personal interest in the code, to ensure that it remains up to date, or to make it run on Wayland or whatever. I want someone to own the code, be proud of it. Is there a general solution for this situation? How do I go about drumming up interest for an old project?"
Sure you can. Find someone to work on it and get them to sign up for Gittip, while you do the same. You can "tip" them a few cents to several bucks per week for their efforts and they can get paid by you and other supporters.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
While on the topic about fragmentation... Android is another type of linux.
c++;
http://dooblet.com/alternative-to-icewm
http://alternativeto.net/software/icewm/
http://linux.descargargratis.co/icewm/alternatives
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
I'm an OS/2 refugee.
There are parts of KDE that seem much closer to WPS than the other environments. For example, right clicking in Dolphin and "Create New" to make a new blank object is similar to Workplace Shell's templates.
The only parts of icewm that are similar to WPS is the coloring and button layout.
None of the environments on Linux, Windows, or OSX are like the WPS "object oriented user interface." To understand what this is like you have to actually have used OS/2. Everyone else has no idea.
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BMO
I have a mod stalker who is modding down my past comments and is too much of a cowardly pussy to admit it or face me.
No, you get modded down because you say idiotic things like this:
Now you know why 90% of FLOSS projects are crap.
Implying that this is different in closed source software. This is false. 90 percent of closed-source software is crap too. Sturgeon's Law applies everywhere.
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BMO
While on the topic about fragmentation... Android is another type of linux.
No, its not. End users and nearly all **developers** don't see it. The Linux kernel could probably be swapped out with a BSD kernel and few would notice. Even for those using the NDK and writing some C code they are probably making POSIX calls not calls to anything Linux specific.
You might want to check into a class of crowdfunding sites that exist to fund features in free and open source software. The two main ones I could find are:
https://www.bountysource.com/
https://bountyoss.com/
"Hey guys, I really love your software... I'd be totally unwilling to pay for it, but I'd really love it if you did all of this work for me, thanks." The problem with the Linux software ecosystem is that it does not run on gratitude alone, as much as some of the users would love to think that it does.
In truth, Linux is largely subsidized by various commercial corporation. If it had remained a hobbyist effort it would be far far behind where it is today.
No, it's the same as running BSD :P
I'm not too interested in an escrow service, but personally I liked tvtwm enough I might join a bounty program to bring it back into the mainstream.
I'd gladly toss a few bucks to fund a bounty to get it back into a major distro.
Well, BSD generally attracks fewer developes than GPL, and you need to own the copyright to change the license, but outside of that it's a reasonable idea.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
It's called marketing. RubyOnRails wasn't the first web framework and it certainly wasn't the best. In fact, it was pretty shitty. But it was the first that had a professionally designed website that advertised its benefits and a screencast that explained and demonstraded them. The pratically invented screencasts. Weeks later slashdot was filled with Rails fanatics.
The first version of the Zope Webapp Server came out roughly a decade before rails and still was notabliy superiour to any other WebFW, Rails included, in all aspects. Yet nobody cared. Why? That's why. Bland website? Nothing flashy? Can't find what I'm looking for? Backend UI without good looking buttons? Won't adhere to the loudmouths and hippsters and won't get attention, won't get critical mass, will lose eventually. It's that simple, even in the FOSS world nowadays (Rails actually sought to that, btw.)
If you really want to bring ICEwm (back) into the limelight, join the team, update their 12 year old website, bundle a new version with good looking modern themes and your tweaked setup, give it a new version number and do a little rattling on related online forums. Once everything is in place, tested, up and running that is. If you've done your job well, userbase will rise again and IceWM 2.0 will the the Hip WM of 2014. Fluxbox, a Blackbox fork, gained hippness status some years back the exact same way. Neat website, one or two nice little extras, screenshots, a well kempt miniblog and everybody went "Oh, look, new and shiny."
That's just about all there is to it. But don't you dare think good marketing isn't work and isn't worth giving as much thought as your projects software architecture. It's more work and - most of the time - even more important than that for the success of a project. Even in FOSS.
Good luck.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I use icewm pretty regularly on some machines. It hasn't changed in years, and I like it that way.
Is there actually anything that needs doing?
That's utterly inane attention-grubbing bullshit that needs to stop because it makes all of us look bad. Linux is not GNU/Linux any more than Windows is "GNU/Windows" after you install Cygwin. Do you use the Cerf/Internet every day, and sometimes drive a Lenoir/Car? What did you have for Albertson's/Lunch?
You make this point yourself. If the developer of a closed source package gets bored of it, or it is not profitable (which itself is a high bar for a most producers!), or both, they will drop it. Anyone who came to rely on it is completely stuck, as they cannot fix the most trivial or sexy bugs. They have to live with it until advancing technology and other changes make the program fail completely, and they will have to retrain.
If it is open source, then at least you can recompile and/or port to a new OS. You have the option of paying someone to fix a problem. You have none of those options if the closed-source producer of a package arbitrarily decides to drop it.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Linux is not GNU/Linux any more than Windows is "GNU/Windows" after you install Cygwin.
That is an intellectually dishonest comparison. The more accurate comparison is "MS/Windows to GNU/Linux" - basically all of the userland on Windows depends on MS code. Similarly pretty much all of Linux userland depends on GNU code - gcc and glibc have practically 100% coverage for Linux userland's dependency on GNU software without having to get into the nitty-gritty details of exactly what other GNU software is in a typical distribution.
I'm not particularly in favor of GNU/Linux as a term but I'm not particularly against it either. Right now, in this post, what I am against is bogus arguments either way.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Indeed. The problem is finding enough icewm users to fund a programmer to do maintenance on it. What the OP really ought to be doing is not looking for someone to work on icewm, but for fellow users.
It's properly referred to as Free Cell/Windows.
-Dave
I'm sorry I can't give any good advise on how to save icemw. What I can do is give you some reasons why an Open Source developer might be interested in developing a project... You can then try to find a marketing angle that appeals to one of these: 1. At the root of all open source development is the desire to do one of two things: (A) Build a tool of profound use to self and/or others. (B) Build one's skills and/or resume. Unfortunately, desktop management systems are an innovation that we've moved beyond. Today the "wild west" is in HTML5 cloud computing, wearable devices (mobile in general), etc. Sometimes an old technology will get lucky and be used as a building-block to something new and upcoming. What makes icewm so useful? How is it useful in the context of things on the "cutting-edge" today? If you can't answer that in a meaningful way then you may need to face the fact that change is a fundamental (and sometimes sad) part of the computer industry.