Why do you not maintain these popular projects anymore?
IonicaBizau opened this issue · 89 comments
@harthur I was looking at your profile and saw this:
Why do you not maintain these projects anymore? If you don't have time to do that, why do you not search somebody to keep them alive?
@harthur - If you would like to move this repo into an organization, I would be happy to maintain it.
@nickpoorman I was going to suggest that. 😄 👍
That would be great. I am using this software in a project thesis because it is just the simplest solution out here :)
😞
how about forking the repos and creating an organisation for maintenance during her absence?
I like that idea @nickpoorman 👍
@FranzSkuffka I am not for forking and maintaining. It's much harder to maintain your own fork because most of the people will find this popular repository.
I also vote for moving these projects in an organization, like @nickpoorman suggested. 💫
She have switched jobs to something secret so maybe she isn't even allowed to reply here: https://harthur.wordpress.com
@irony Oh, interesting read! 📖
Any update on this, guys? It would be awesome if this would be moved into an organization.
I just emailed @harthur! Hope she will reply me and save these nice goodies. 😁 🎁 🙏
Thanks @IonicaBizau let us know how it goes.
I would also like this!
Any update on this?
No response from the author yet... 😞
There's an opportunity here for someone to take this over. Preferably someone who understands the codebase and is willing to move the project forward. That said, the project owner seems to have been the only major contributor in the past.
Yes but as @IonicaBizau said that's not easy to fork and maintain because of popularity of THIS repository.
Fair point - I agree that moving this project to an org would be the best solution - it's a shame the owner isn't responding the messages. 😞
@michaelpittino I contacted GitHub support–maybe they will be able to help us since @harthur had a talk at Passion Projects. Hopefully they will have a solution. 🙏
From GitHub support:
Unfortunately we don't have any contact details for Heather Arthur from her Passion Projects appearance. Hopefully she'll reply to your email if she's able to help.
Let's start a petition at change.org. :-)
Why not just create a fork, move development there, keep an eye on this repo and point people to the fork whenever they open issues or PR:s here and then if/when the owner of this repo gets back to you then this repo can be updated to point to that repo.
+1, basically what I suggested already.
I also agree with @voxpelli
I did contact @harthur about being a maintainer, no reply. I did read her website, and why she ended up doing so, and totally respect it. I would really like to continue in her absence, hoping the best for her. There is a risk that she doesn't like any of the changes we do, but there is also the chance we may end up improving these fantastic libraries. That being said, there are enough of us and these libraries are useful enough I went ahead and created: https://github.com/harthur-org and forked all libraries. If you'd like access, open a pull request.
@robertleeplummerjr That's cool! 👍
I would still recommend having real source repositories, not forks (that means: delete forks, create repos, git push --all from local clones of @harthur's repos). I do not like forks because they have limitations like:
- they are not searchable
- commits in forks are not counted in the contributions calendar (big thing, right? 😂)
Instead we can explicitly state it's the repos are a continuation of the original projects.
I agree with @IonicaBizau, that makes perfect sense.
@ilanbiala, What if @harthur decides to re-maintain? We open a single pull request, and merge, and then the org can go away.
@robertleeplummerjr Note we can always make pull requests between source repositories (not only between forks)—I still think we should convert them in source repositories, not forking. 😁
Give me a few, I'll work it out.
Note we can always make pull requests between source repositories
Well, actually that's wrong: I mean, we can synchronize the source repositories anyways: when the original owner is back and wants to maintain the source repo, we fork it, synchronize the fork (git pull ...) and then creating a PR on GitHub. 😁
I get what you intended to say. I do it all the time for private repos based off of public ones. Don't know why I didn't think about it, probably an A.D.D. moment.
Done for brain, and: BrainJS/brain.js@388e5ea
@robertleeplummerjr 🆒 We now can start merging these PRs from this very repository in the @harthur-org account (by git pulling). ✨
@IonicaBizau I'd like to make you a fellow maintainer since you started this issue. Seems only right. Just pushed unit tests for the likely method.
@robertleeplummerjr Thanks! 👍 Happy to help in my spare time. Not sure, but I may use this module in one of projects. 😄
✊ 🔥
Added you to the "with great power comes great responsibility" team.
@robertleeplummerjr Thanks! I'm not evil. 🍀
I know, the name of the team is a reminder for me 😛
😂
I love that the community has started maintaining this project. One reason this project is so useful to people, is the simplicity of the code. There's no underlying BLAS library being called to do "magic" behind the scenes. In the spirt of this, I hope when these pull requests start being merged you keep that in mind, and document any new features added. Such as the "likely", which in my opinion should be an a separate util lib and not in the lib/neuralnetwork.js source (especially since convolutional neural networks are better suited for the example provided with that pull request).
@nickpoorman I agree! 👍 Maybe for such things, open issues in the new repository. It's easier to track. 😄
Well stated @nickpoorman.
How would you guys feel about a 👍 policy? Where at least one person that has contributed and that is not the committer must 👍 the PR moving forward. When the 👍 is landed, we then can merge the PR.
Obviously harthur is the maintainer of the npm packages aswell. I have had experience with the npm removing coffeescript (which was not coffee-script) upon my request, because it was a confusing, unnecessarily publicated package.
We could either a.) ask at npmjs.org for permission to be added as package maintainers or b.) publish the packages with a prefix like harthur-org-brain.
@robertleeplummerjr I agree with you on establishing a consensus-based policy. However I would extend the pull-request cycle by two(?) days for example after the 👍. During these two days anyone can throw in a veto, setting the earliest moment of the merge at one(?) day from the veto when a valid argument was given.
@FranzSkuffka I always had good experiences with the guys from npm support—they transferred quite few packages on my account (mostly they were unmaintained/obsolete/bad quality/etc packages), but always they did a great job. I'd say we can give a try to ask them. Then we will get some traffic from the npm package. 😂
@IonicaBizau agreed, would be great to get some traffic from there!
btw, WTH did you do to your commit graph 😆
when one has the capability to rewrite git history...
@FranzSkuffka Check this out. 😂
Pleeeease, without the f word!
ask at npmjs.org for permission to be added as package maintainers
I contacted npm support and they did talk to @harthur. She wants to keep the npm packages in this state, so, we need to apply plan b): to publish the packages under different names. 😞
/cc @FranzSkuffka
Ok. Let's think of a good prefix for the package names.
Sample:
contrib-brain
community-brain
com-brain
...
Ill throw out:
js-brain
org-brain
I do like community-brain though :)
Total bike-shedding here, but I feel obligated to mention a few common fork naming conventions:
brain-ng
brain-plus
(I'm not a big fan of contrib-brain because "contrib" is tainted in my mind by the multiple projects I've seen that have a "contrib" directory full of useful but unsupported and buggy 3rd-party patches that never got properly merged in.)
Cool - I didn't know there was a naming convention for it.
Where is the easiest place to start an online poll?
@ghpabs You could try http://strawpoll.me/
My ideas are:
brain.jsbrain2
😁
Thanks @SoullessWaffle.
Ps. It's okay if you guys decide to add more options to the poll though.
Results as of Apr 8, 2016, 10:43 AM GMT+1
- brain.js 10 votes (45%)
- js-brain 4 votes (18%)
- brain-plus 2 votes (9%)
- brain2 2 votes (9%)
- contrib-brain 1 vote (5%)
- community-brain 1 vote (5%)
- org-brain 1 vote (5%)
- brain-ng 1 vote (5%)
- com-brain 0 votes (0%)
Here's two more ideas:
brain-next
brain++ (as in c++; brain incremented by one)
@SoullessWaffle I don't think + can be used in the package names.
harthur-brain could be a good choice SEO-wise
@IonicaBizau you're right, perhaps we could use brainpp
Can we decide on the date by which everyone should vote.
The poll has been open for just over a week now.
Updated results:
- brain.js 13 votes (46%)
- js-brain 4 votes (14%)
- brain2 4 votes (14%)
- community-brain 2 votes (7%)
- brain-plus 2 votes (7%)
- contrib-brain 1 vote (4%)
- org-brain 1 vote (4%)
- brain-ng 1 vote (4%)
- com-brain 0 votes (0%)
28 total votes
@IonicaBizau I guess you could call brain.js the winner?
I npm published it under the brain.js name on npm. 🚀
If any of you wants to have superpowers on npm, feel free to 🔔 me and I will npm owner add you. 😁 Also, if you want to contribute to the project we can add you as member in the @harthur-org organization.
Thank you @IonicaBizau
Devs, I believe a "huzza" is in order.
Huzza!!!!
Great job guys. ;)
In the past I have used Brain.js and some other JavaScript based machine learning libraries but unfortunately I have found them not matching my needs. That's why, working on my personal projects, I have developed the idea of creating a different approach by myself. So, sorry to be here to talk about another project but I would really like to receive some opinions and suggestions from experienced people that, being into this specific field, could help me to set useful and shared expectations. By the way, thanks for the great support given to Brain.js so far. The library is called DN2A and is on https://github.com/dn2a/dn2a-javascript
Can you please open a new issue, that way this issue stays focused?
https://medium.com/@heatherarthur/what-happens-when-you-retire-from-github-979fb6b143b3
Basically, he writes: This is hard work for him, A one with limited resources to maintain his repositories for others. He is overwhelmed by a large number of people contacting him. He has no resources for this. He dislikes this. So he quit GitHub. he "declared bankruptcy" on time devoted to Github, and He regrets sharing his repositories because it took so much time from his life. He expected people would fork and the code would be maintained by users themselves. but many good wishing people fall into his open door smashing him because they are just too much for him. So he asked to not contact him anymore regarding Github. even if you find him or his name.
expected people would fork and the code would be maintained by users themselves
And that is exactly what happened.
This is one of the most fascinating issues I have ever scrolled through. I love coders and the code community. Way to go for pulling together, people!
She's alive and well - machine-learning-engineering. I think there was more than one issue motivating her to abandon github. But I don't want to seed any rumors here. You better google any information up yourself. She has a medium account.
@FranzSkuffka But her profile says deceased https://github.com/harthur what happened to her. It saddens me to see a github profile like that.
Wow - that must be very recent. The last post on medium was Feb 24.
edit: She's alive. Or Twitter has an API for ghosts.
https://twitter.com/harthvader
I'm not still understand why she left the Github, someone can explain?
@AlibekJ my English is not so good, but here we go, I care because she's contributed a lot with the community and she just disappeared, why? Some problem with her career, or personal? Is it something we can help with? Is just empathy with the next!
This is one of the most fascinating issues I have ever scrolled through. I love coders and the code community. Way to go for pulling together, people!
Exactly my thought.
I'm surprised in why she didn't set maintainer permissions for those who contacted about that but at least BrainJS is a community thing.
Consider this: https://github.com/rejuvenate/rejuvenate