GitLab plans to delete dormant projects in free accounts – Problem is good software does not need regular fixing
GitLab is aware of the potential for angry opposition to the plan, and will therefore give users weeks or months of warning before deleting their work. A single comment, commit, or new issue posted to a project during a 12-month period will be sufficient to keep the project alive.
Back when I was young… I took great pride in writing software once, that required no further intervention on my part. For example I’d make the VAT rate an editable item the user could change, I’d include maintenance options to perform a reindex, etc.
I recently started coding again, and wrote a utility in Python that parses some command line stuff to manage a Cloudflare WARP GUI for Linux users. So unless Cloudflare actually changes the format of what they show, I should not have to update that app for two or longer years.
The point is, you should not risk throwing away good software just because it does not get any updates. Yes new features may justify updates being done, but why penalise software that is stable and works well?
I see though they will give warning and it seems a comment will suffice, so maybe it is more about identifying project owners who are no longer alive. But that said, still, do we want to lose valuable code that others can fork or learn from? In my opinion no, as some text files and a binary don’t take up so much space.
“People host their code there because there is this idea it will be available to the general public to reuse and remix”
See https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/04/gitlab_data_retention_policy/
#technology #gitlab #opensource
source https://gadgeteer.co.za/gitlab-plans-to-delete-dormant-projects-in-free-accounts-problem-is-good-software-does-not-need-regular-fixing/
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