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In mid-2019, programmer Denis Pushkarev dropped that he was likely to go to jail. He announced it in a thread on the collaborative development platform Github, where since 2014 he has maintained Core-JS, a code library that allows other programmers to reuse pre-made developments without having to start from scratch. Pushkarev was then the only active manager with permissions to maintain the project, which records more than 20 million downloads a week from users who integrate Core-js into their own jobs. According to a ruling by the Altai regional court (Russia), Pushkarev was involved in an accident where two people were run over - one was injured, the other died.he tried unsuccessfully to allege that the victims were drunk to lessen their responsibility for the events and was preparing to serve an 18-month sentence.
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The sentence gave way to almost a year of silence. Between January and October 2020, Core-js was abandoned. Pushkarev did not designate other maintainers and simply left the repository without updating until he announced his return with a terse "I'm back." His is an extreme case and particularly bizarre, but the abandonments of libraries and other open source projects are frequent in the sector. On the one hand, the maintenance and management of the community of collaborators becomes more demanding the more recognition is obtained. “The growing popularity of a project may be accompanied by a growing number of contributions that have to be analyzed and increase the workload for those who maintain it,” confirms Alexander Serebrenik, a researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology (the Netherlands).On the other hand, the lack of resources or the excess of zeal in many occasions leave the enormous responsibility of keeping the project alive in the hands of tiny teams —or one-person — who also combine these tasks with their work obligations.
This phenomenon creates on platforms such as Github, which in 2020 registered more than 60 million newly created repositories, a kind of elephant graveyard where the bones of what were once hotbeds of ideas appear. In Bitergia they have been measuring the health of these communities for almost a decade and the relationship between those responsible for the project and their collaborators. "One of the factors we analyze is the probability that a project will survive if the main developers have an accident," says Daniel Izquierdo, CEO and co-founder of this company, which collaborates with
software
foundations.
Free from the likes of Linux, Mozilla or Wikimedia. According to a recent study, 65% of projects with 20 or more developers are active after 165 months. In the case of smaller teams, the percentage of survivors drops to 20%.
But the silence of those digital wastelands whose records show the years that have passed since someone appeared to make the last contribution is not the only consequence of abandonment. The more popular the project has been, the more likely it is that a long list of developers have implemented it in their own jobs. These, Izquierdo warns, will be exposed to security problems that "can be catastrophic" in the medium term. Jesús González-Barahona, researcher and coordinator of the free knowledge and culture office of the Rey Juan Carlos University, explains that these pieces of code remain anchored in the past. "They are not going to adapt to new environments, hardware or versions of the operating system." And they won't incorporate new features or bug fixes either.What is the alternative? "If this project is very critical for you or you care minimally about the projects of
free
software
, somehow you would have to have the initiative to participate and try to solve that, "concludes Izquierdo.
Second Chances
The abandonment of projects is not new, Peter Mattis and Spencer Kimball, creators of the popular drawing tool GIMP, already abandoned their creature in the 90s. "We left them a bit in the lurch when we got a job," they explained to EL PAÍS in a interview. But their experience shows that the departure of the original promoters does not have to be a death sentence: more than 25 years later, GIMP is still alive and well thanks to the work of a large and committed group of collaborators. According to Serebrenik's research, what motivates these adoptions of orphan initiatives is the desire to avoid the project being interrupted and to contribute to the continuity of the
free
software
community
, from whose contributions they have benefited.
The truth is that despite their difficulties, these projects are specially prepared to cheat death. “The problem is more serious with
non-free
software
. If the manufacturer stops maintaining it, you have nowhere to turn. In the case of
free
software
, if there is enough interest or resources, you can always find people who will revive the project: the license allows it ”, explains González-Barahona. The ability for any user to obtain the code to use, modify, redistribute or study it allows the history of GIMP not to be an isolated case. "Perhaps the best known example is Firefox, which grew out of a project abandoned by Netscape, the company that in the late 1990s was one of the leaders in web browsers," he adds.
What is the protocol for adopting an abandoned project? The Code Shelter platform proposes a system similar to pet shelters where those who want to take a cable can find initiatives whose managers cannot cope or are preparing to get off the boat. “I would always recommend at least asking, see how they are doing and if you can help out. And if not, on Github it is as cheap as clicking a button and you already have a copy in your account ”, comments Izquierdo. Good manners in managing community contributions are also key to the health of these initiatives. “Rejection can seem unfair to collaborators and discourage them from continuing to contribute, not just to the specific project, but to the
software.
free in general, ”warns Serebrenik.
Furthermore, should a portfolio transfer become necessary, the friendliest managers have a better chance of finding heirs willing and willing to pick up the baton.
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