Where people see stale and abandonment, i see maturity.
As i grow older i learn the value of mature software. Software that knows its place in the grander scheme of things. That do its job quietly and reliably, with clear information when something goes wrong.
Yes, for a young newcomer said software may look boring, many not be utilizing their latest GPU to draw rectangles on screen, but said software has been doing what it has been doing reliably for a decade or more.
Damn it, just look at systemd-resolved. It keeps pulling the trigger on footgun after footgun because someone decided that he could do DNS better than existing, battle tested, software, and lumped it in with the rest of the systemd shoggoth for good measure.
What seems to happen with most of these projects is that the initial developer gets discouraged when he bumps into the 10% of remaining functionality of what he is replacing. The 10% that is hard, and that has lead to the large amount of gnarly code in the old and "stale" project he was gunning to replace in a caffeine fueled weekend.
But sadly this threadmill that FOSS is saddled with will continue to spin, because as a culture software development has come to value LOCS pr hour over reliability. And we keep punting the old guard into middle management, and replace them with youngers that hammers out said LOCS rather than stop and consider what the old code is actually doing.
As i grow older i learn the value of mature software. Software that knows its place in the grander scheme of things. That do its job quietly and reliably, with clear information when something goes wrong.
Yes, for a young newcomer said software may look boring, many not be utilizing their latest GPU to draw rectangles on screen, but said software has been doing what it has been doing reliably for a decade or more.
Damn it, just look at systemd-resolved. It keeps pulling the trigger on footgun after footgun because someone decided that he could do DNS better than existing, battle tested, software, and lumped it in with the rest of the systemd shoggoth for good measure.
What seems to happen with most of these projects is that the initial developer gets discouraged when he bumps into the 10% of remaining functionality of what he is replacing. The 10% that is hard, and that has lead to the large amount of gnarly code in the old and "stale" project he was gunning to replace in a caffeine fueled weekend.
But sadly this threadmill that FOSS is saddled with will continue to spin, because as a culture software development has come to value LOCS pr hour over reliability. And we keep punting the old guard into middle management, and replace them with youngers that hammers out said LOCS rather than stop and consider what the old code is actually doing.