While the Apache Foundation hosts a lot of great projects, it also looks to me like a place where big projects go to die. I'm thinking of the whole Apache Open-Office fiasco, among other things. Looking at their list of projects sorted by number of committers[0], event at the top I don't get the idea that most of those have a lot of momentum. Do I just have a completely wrong impression? I'm curious if there's someth…
You have a completely wrong impression.
Projects in the wild die all the time, and the process is not necessarily neat and tidy.
At the ASF, projects must be actively retired, and there are a sequence of actions which must be taken to move the project into the "Attic". Retirement gives all stakeholders a defined close of business.
All software projects have a life cycle. What is notable about ASF projects is that the end of the life cycle is comparatively orderly.
I wish the Wave folks well as they move on to whatever's next for them.