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A comment on FOSS Zombies.

Re:FOSS Zombies by einpoklum on Saturday December 07, 2019 @04:42PM (#21732757)
The opening example is not actually of FOSS zombies... because _you_ are someone who knows the project and is interested in pushing it forward (and conceivably, might maintain it).

Real FOSS zombies have _users_ depending on them, and expecting to see maintenance or updates, but nobody to carry those tasks out. The linked-to article is more about "Zombie project steering". IMHO.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:FOSS Zombies by zozbot234 on Saturday December 07, 2019 @05:34PM (#21733030)
Those users could pay for someone to pick up maintenance and support.
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Re:FOSS Zombies by protomyth on Sunday December 08, 2019 @12:24AM (#21734469)
I'm not sure some of the users actually knows the state of the FOSS project. I would bet there are more than a few businesses that have software they paid for that has some code from these projects.
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Re:FOSS Zombies by jdsully on Sunday December 08, 2019 @11:42AM (#21736736)
If it works well enough that nobody has noticed support has stopped... Maybe the software is done?
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Re:FOSS Zombies by protomyth on Sunday December 08, 2019 @01:02PM (#21737147)
In general, I would agree, but you are one OS upgrade from failure (see Mac OS Catalina). I would imagine some testing will surface that the company needs to act.
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Re:FOSS Zombies by hermanradtke on Saturday December 07, 2019 @11:40PM (#21734377)
I find this is quite difficult to do in practice.
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