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Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?

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Re: Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?

#51

Post by rollcat »

Maken wrote: post #36
michaelt wrote: post #18

In this thread: Wildly different definitions of what "widely used" means :) Did you know tools like uname [1] and cat [2] in GNU coreutils have essentially only had two contributors in the past decade? [1] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=histor... [2] http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=histor...

I'm actually surprised by the amount of changes in 'cat'. One would assume a program like that is already 'done'.

> I'm actually surprised by the amount of changes in 'cat'.

"'cat -v' considered harmful" is an ongoing meme, but there's truth to it. http://harmful.cat-v.org/cat-v/

cat(1) concatenates files. Some software should be considered done.

Re: Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?

#52

Post by rollcat »

withinboredom wrote: post #46
rollcat wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good list. Sometimes the easiest way to contribute is to just donate some money, so that the existing maintainers can continue to focus on their work. OpenBSD is the "mothership" project for both OpenSSH and LibreSSL: https://www.openbsd.org/donations.html Unfortunately I couldn't find any information on how to donate to these projects: - https://re2c.org - https://github.com/libexpat/libexpat - https://github.com/li…

I didn't realize the IANA contributed debian packages and rpms. /s They maintain the list, but someone has to package it.

Please link on how to contribute to Debian then: https://www.debian.org/devel/join/

Re: Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?

#53

Post by johannes1234321 »

0x073 wrote: post #34
ale42 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised to hear this, any more info?

Its wrong, or at least not my definition of few people. https://thephp.foundation/structure/ "Core Developers The PHP Foundation contracts 10 full-time and part-time engineers to maintain and develop the PHP language."

There are many, people doing (good, valuable) things on PHP, however active people with deep understanding of the engine can be counted on less than a hand. (I contributed some small things to the engine and other parts in the past)

Re: Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?

#58

Post by wiercin »

Karliss wrote: post #30

It almost feels like it's easier to list which fundamental projects have more than one active maintainer. Many of the core library and tools are mostly finished and have very little yearly activity. How many maintainers does a project have if the last activity was one or two commits made or maybe just merged by one maintainer 3 years ago, and few more 5 years ago. Does it count as 2 maintainers, 1 maintainer, 0 maint…

Looking at the example of sudo it seems there are still plenty of regular and recent commits.

https://github.com/sudo-project/sudo/commits/main/

Re: Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?

#59

Post by fouronnes3 »

teeceepee wrote: post #20

Time Zone Database https://github.com/eggert/tz/graphs/contributors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database

This is a good answer. Especially in the light of the 2021 drama and the maintainer's benevolent dictator status. What happens when the community disagrees with a benevolent dictator's decision?

https://lwn.net/Articles/870478/

Re: Which open-source projects are widely used but maintained by just a few people?

#60

Post by koliber »

fouronnes3 wrote: post #59
teeceepee wrote: post #20

Time Zone Database https://github.com/eggert/tz/graphs/contributors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database

This is a good answer. Especially in the light of the 2021 drama and the maintainer's benevolent dictator status. What happens when the community disagrees with a benevolent dictator's decision? https://lwn.net/Articles/870478/

A revolution
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