Open Source hot take: A software project is allowed to be *done*.

[whitequark@social.treehouse.systems]

@david_chisnall @webbop @tante or in other words: there's a lot to be said for designing for extensibility, but it's an order of magnitude harder design, implementation, and support task, and so outright impossible for someone for whom the base application stretches their skill and experience to the limit

open interchange formats are still very hard in many of the same ways, but not quite as hellishly difficult

[tante@tldr.nettime.org]

@munin *Claude Voice* You are making a very insightful point.

[pforpond@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@tante we already can (and do) do this, not sure what the issue is or where the hot take is?

[takiro@meow.social]

@tante I remember seeing people complaining on a Steam forum of a game about the game being "dead". It was a single player game and the developer replied that the game is simply done and finished and the reason it didn't get updates for years is that there are no known bugs to fix.

[leonid@norden.social]

@tante idk.. Done as no more features, but if there are no bug fixes since a long time, I wouldn't use it.

[orava@ruhr.social]

@leonid @tante what if there are no known bugs? Some stuff is just quite stable. Personally I prefer that over a project adding new features all the time with the risk of introducing new bugs. Sure if the issue tracker is full of bugs and no action that sounds dead. But there are also quite active projects, regular new features, that have an issue trackers full of bugs. but nobody cares about maintaining it's all about new features.

[nohatcoder@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@leonid @tante Maybe there are no bugs? I know that this proposition seem impossible to some people, but it is possible for sufficiently simple software. And it would be a pretty dumb reason to skip over it.

[rakoo@blah.rako.space]

@tante the corollary is that software should go back to being tools not products, and that is something many can get behind

[aedius@lavraievie.social]

@tante

People should fork small project instead of overbloat biggest project

[cyclopentane@rheinneckar.social]

@tante i aspire to write software in a way such that "unmaintained" is a compliment

[leonid@norden.social]

@orava @tante I came across many libraries and applications that hadn't had any commits for months or even years. There were also a lot of issues in the tracker. They are probably abandoned. I would never use them in my projects.

Sometimes, updates are released to fix issues or security vulnerabilities in dependencies.

I think a small, relatively isolated library or project can remain stable indefinitely. However, even these will have some dependencies, such as the OS.

[leonid@norden.social]

@NohatCoder @tante if it is really simple, then you can fork it and fix the issues.

[elrohir@mastodon.gal]

@tante but muh investahs

[hllizi@hespere.de]

@tante
It's not without irony that software in theory provided for the possibility of crafting technological objects that could last forever for the first time, while in practice they expire faster than Liz Truss.

[hllizi@hespere.de]

@joosteto
IIRC Xmonad is finished, too. But that's going to make its exit with X11 anyway.
@tante

[hllizi@hespere.de]

@leonid
Valid point if there are known bugs.
@tante

[spitfire@mastodon.de]

@tante same goes for videogames.

[torb@hachyderm.io]

@tante I do agree, but if I think there’s no change in literally years, it can sometimes be hard to know if it’s just because it’s done or because it’s not maintained and now have security issues or other problems.

[leonid@norden.social]

@hllizi @tante you can have bugs and vulnerabilities in dependencies. Which were discovered after the software became "stable". So maybe there are no known bugs, but the software is still buggy.

[hllizi@hespere.de]

@leonid
OK, fair point
@tante