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

[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.

[dashdsrdash@tilde.zone]

@ArneBab @tante

The mantra of the last 25+ years has been that desktop computing is easy and ubiquitous and all programs should be easy.

Because they are easy, they do not require manuals or good documentation and most importantly, do not require training and education.

The reality is that every field of endeavor is complex and messy and has lots of stuff to learn. Management gravitates to "it looks easier, so it must work better" and this is almost always incorrect.

Meanwhile, many people have adopted the idea that they "aren't good at computers" when in reality they have never been taught and don't even realize what there is to learn.

[bdf2121cc3334b35b6ecda66e471@mastodon.social]

@tante fewer apps, more utils, please

[darkling@mstdn.social]

@tante When I was a more active participant in the erlang ecosystem, that was one of the nice things about it -- there are some old, good libraries which haven't been touched in years, because they're finished. And people in the community were ready to defend those libraries and that position when anyone expressed reservations about using them because they were old.

[twijs@social.edu.nl]

@tante This is also something for users to take note of. How many 'bug reports' I did not get asking if the project is still alive, or people discrediting software as 'unmaintained' only because the latest release is 1,5y old. There were no new things to fix.

[cshabsin@hachyderm.io]

@tante I can't imagine ever being done with software I actually use in day-to-day life. I will always spot something that can be better or smoother or some additional functionality that would make it more useful. (This is, of course, a big "if" - talking about software "for me".)

In software in the public/open source/product sphere, I imagine there will always be feature requests from the userbase as well. If something comes in that is worthwhile (and truly additive to the value of the software)... why ignore it?

[adrian@mastodon.design]

@tante I've been thinking about this a lot with a particular client. They keep building out new features, and while they're not bad features, I'm not sure it's actually helping the product.

[smilingdemon@mastodon.art]

@tante this essentially applies to all sorts of things. Not everything always needs to be constantly in search of more.

[retrosleipnir@mastodon.social]

@tante I wish corporations would realize this also!