Failures in OSS Ownership
#programming#devjournal#discuss#opensource
Joe Mainwaring

Joe Mainwaring @theaccordance

About: 20+ years across IT and Engineering. Founding Partner at Super Pax. I author Senior, Principal, and Executive-level technology posts.

Location:
Chicago, IL
Joined:
Feb 22, 2018

Failures in OSS Ownership

Publish Date: Aug 29 '22
8 11

Today while I was looking at a list of open pull requests I still had open on Github, I was surprised to see a pull request that had been opened 2 years ago that I did not recall authoring, so I clicked on the PR. Turns out, I did in fact write the pull request, and it went 2 years without so much as a comment, let alone a review from the project maintainers. This is also not the first time this has happened with my contributions to a third-party dependency I was using.

I understand the nature of open source, but I also find it negligent for some owners to abandon their projects without either archiving it or transferring ownership. I don't expect an owner to be actively developing code for their project, but reviewing the project once every 90/180/365 days? That's not a big ask, we all have 1 hour in that time we could spare to at least take a look.

There's a difference in the level of effort between fixing a broken dependency for my own need, and contributing a fix back to the dependency for everyone to benefit, so it's a true shame when those efforts can't even be acknowledged.

Comments 11 total

  • Vincent A. Cicirello
    Vincent A. CicirelloAug 30, 2022

    It looks to me like that repository has been abandoned. Most recent merged PR is about 2 years ago around time you opened yours. And there are PRs opened by dependabot 1 year ago that are still open.

    There is a GitHub Action that is maintained by GitHub that does something similar and works well. So if you are looking for an alternative, check out:

    GitHub logo actions / stale

    Marks issues and pull requests that have not had recent interaction

    Close Stale Issues and PRs

    Warns and then closes issues and PRs that have had no activity for a specified amount of time.

    The configuration must be on the default branch and the default values will:

    • Add a label "Stale" on issues and pull requests after 60 days of inactivity and comment on them
    • Close the stale issues and pull requests after 7 days of inactivity
    • If an update/comment occur on stale issues or pull requests, the stale label will be removed and the timer will restart

    Recommended permissions

    For the execution of this action, it must be able to fetch all issues and pull requests from your repository.
    In addition, based on the provided configuration, the action could require more permission(s) (e.g.: add label, remove label, comment, close, etc.).
    This can be achieved with the following configuration in the action if the permissions are restricted:

    permissions
  issues:
    …
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    • Joe Mainwaring
      Joe MainwaringAug 30, 2022

      Yeah, I have accepted it as abandoned even as I wrote this issue calling out the lack of attention.

      I'll check out the GHA, much obliged for the recommendation!

  • Vincent A. Cicirello
    Vincent A. CicirelloAug 30, 2022

    I meant to add that it is rather ironic that you ran into this problem in the repository of an app whose purpose is to manage stale issues and PRs.

  • Leonardo Montini
    Leonardo MontiniAug 31, 2022

    Fork the project and keep it active :D

    • Joe Mainwaring
      Joe MainwaringAug 31, 2022

      I knew someone was going to make this suggestion.

      While yes, it's a valid path - it has a drawback. People are not going to find my fork if they search, they're going to land at the trunk package first - unless I engage in rebranding the package. That's too much work, and I wasn't necessarily volunteering to become the new maintainer, I'm simply volunteering my fixes back so others can benefit and accelerate their own implementations.

      • Tomas Bruckner
        Tomas BrucknerSep 2, 2022

        If it is about people finding the package. What worked for me in the past is open an issue in the repo that you are forking the project so people can find it more easily.

        But I understand that most people don't want to volunteer and maintain other packages.

  • Dan Jones
    Dan JonesSep 6, 2022

    Obviously it was super important to you, since you forgot about your PR for nearly two years.

    • Joe Mainwaring
      Joe MainwaringSep 6, 2022

      It's not about whether/not it's important to me, it's about fostering a constructive and inclusive ecosystem. Let's dial back the snark and stay constructive in our dialog please.

      • Dan Jones
        Dan JonesSep 6, 2022

        You wrote an entire post to call out someone for not archiving a repo for a project that they already removed from their official list of projects because you noticed that there was an open PR that you had completely forgotten about.

        You also failed to keep up with that PR. You're criticizing them for their failure in open source stewardship, but you failed to even keep up with your open source contributions. They, at least, removed the project from their list of active projects, but you didn't even notice that.

        • Joe Mainwaring
          Joe MainwaringSep 6, 2022

          Okay, that's one take, here's another:

          • The Project itself has no indication that it is no longer maintained. It is not practical to expect contributors to creep on project maintainers to see if they're even advertising that they maintain the package on their profile or another site.
          • Telling me I failed to keep up with the Pull request is a garbage take, plain and simple. I'm picking up after 2 years because I had to pause my life to win a fight against Stage IV Colon Cancer. The fact that I'm even here right now to write this rebuttal is in itself a miracle that defied the odds. Unless you've gone through major surgery and dozens of rounds of chemo, you're in no position to judge me for my punctuality.
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