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

[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

[mimblewimble@mastodon.social]

@tante Was this pointed at Google or Microsoft. Both seem to believe they should "improve" things until they are unusable.

[patterfloof@meow.social]

@NohatCoder @leonid @tante the famous Donald Knuth projects, so bug free he personally offered bug-finder cheques that people framed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check

[patterfloof@meow.social]

@Takiro @tante let games be dead & have the occasional sequel

[svavar@masto.svavar.com]

@tante

While I don’t disagree with the premise that software that delivers on its original purpose doesn’t need to be endlessly expanded, the reality is that all software lives within an ever-changing ecosystem.

Curl comes to mind as a tightly defined set of functionality that still requires constant work because of new protocols and the need for relentless optimisation.

I’ve seen a lot of software age like warm milk because people thought they could just deploy and forget about it.

[uint8_t@chaos.social]

@benofbrown @tante in an ideal world. but 3rd party libraries change, vulnerabilities are discovered, system APIs change, GUI libraries change. Making old software build on modern systems can be very challenging and a lot more work than people think.