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Getting the source code easily...Getting the source code easily...Posted Dec 23, 2010 12:03 UTC (Thu) by alex (subscriber, #1355)Parent article: In Memoriam: the free software projects we lost in 2010 One of the problems with projects that fizzle out is it can often leave contributors wondering what's happening. This is especially true if there is no public source control which people can track. One of the tools I use all the time is EasyTag although it hasn't made a development release since 2008. People have submitted patches to the mailing list and via SourceForge. However the last sighting of the maintainer was back in February claiming no time to do active development but happy to take patches. In some frustration I created a git mirror from the historical tarballs and got an initial flurry of interest. That soon fizzled out but I assume as the tool works people are happy as it is and if it breaks patches will be forthcoming. For the people that care there is at least a live version of HEAD. I guess the project won't be dead until the last user stops caring.
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Getting the source code easily... Posted Dec 23, 2010 17:32 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]
After its development petered out I maintained cdbakeoven for my own personal use, until it became too much of a pain and I broke down and adopted k3b. If git had existed at the time, or if any dvcs had been on my radar, I would have done something a lot like what you did.
I expect that the future of abandoned open source projects will look a lot like this. At some point the code gets posted to a neutral third party host and interested people keep it working until the last person stops caring.
IOW, It's getting harder to be sure a project's really dead.
Getting the source code easily... Posted Dec 23, 2010 21:03 UTC (Thu) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]
I like easytag! Hope it keeps going in some form.
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