Problem with the concept of "feature-complete"

Posted Jan 16, 2026 20:22 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46)
In reply to: Problem with the concept of "feature-complete" by farnz
Parent article: Debian discusses removing GTK 2 for forky

> No - if the specification is incomplete, then you cannot say if something is completed or not.

I'm sorry, but a "complete specification" dwells in the realm of spherical cows, and as such is utterly irrelevant for things built in the real world.

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Problem with the concept of "feature-complete"

Posted Jan 18, 2026 11:57 UTC (Sun) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (2 responses)

That's exactly my point - if you're saying that this thing is "feature complete and will never need further maintenance", you're also implying that the specification against which you claim it's "feature complete and will never need further maintenance" is also itself complete and will never need updating.

And I think we'd be a lot better off as a wider software community if we stopped trying to pretend that there is such a thing as a software project that's "completed, will never need further work", and accepted that software that's not maintained is a liability.

Of course, that doesn't force anyone to maintain it - you can abandon anything for any reason - but it does mean that if you're using unmaintained software, you need to be aware that you're taking on that liability.

Problem with the concept of "feature-complete"

Posted Jan 18, 2026 12:32 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> And I think we'd be a lot better off as a wider software community if we stopped trying to pretend that there is such a thing as a software project that's "completed, will never need further work", and accepted that software that's not maintained is a liability.

Ok, congratulations... by your definition nearly all software is "unmaintained" and is therefore a "liability". What's step two?

> Of course, that doesn't force anyone to maintain it - you can abandon anything for any reason - but it does mean that if you're using unmaintained software, you need to be aware that you're taking on that liability.

In other words... the "AS-IS, NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER" status quo of nearly every software package ever?

Maintenance costs time and money. Taking on liability for something also comes with a price premium. Who's going to pay for those costs? Hint: It's going to be end-users that benefit from said software, not "the wider software community" (which will at best just pass any costs through)

Problem with the concept of "feature-complete"

Posted Jan 19, 2026 15:15 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Step 2 is either to arrange maintenance for the software you care about - whether you do it yourself, or pay someone to do it for you doesn't matter - or to accept that the software is at risk of having problems in the future, and you're going to have to address those problems when they come up one way or another. Addressing those problems, in turn, could be "I'll fix them when I know about them", but it could also be "if they hit, I'll accept my system being wiped - my fault for not maintaining things properly".

The key is to stop imagining that non-trivial software can practically be "finished and safe to use as-is forever". Either it's being maintained, and therefore the maintenance work will keep it in "safe to use" condition, or it's not being maintained, and you're at risk of finding a critical bug that means you can no longer safely use it.

It also changes how product liability law in the EU sees offers of free stuff (and is part of why early CRA drafts got things so badly wrong for Free and open source software). Gifting unfinished things is something that incurs liability in part to stop manufacturers having the bright idea of selling you just enough of the product that the free bit is useless without the paid-for bit, while gifting you the rest so it's not part of the paid-for bits. In contrast, it's understood by product liability law that gifting you something that's in what I considered working order at the time I gifted it does not put me on the hook for providing free maintenance into the future.