Long-Term Sustainability of Open-Source Projects

⚙️ Technology and Open Source
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Hello

One of the biggest challenges in open-source software development is dealing with abandoned dependencies. Many projects rely on third-party libraries that are no longer actively maintained, leading to security risks, compatibility issues, and technical debt. :innocent:

This is especially problematic when a critical dependency is suddenly discontinued, leaving developers scrambling for alternatives. :thinking:

What are the best strategies to mitigate the risk of dependency abandonment? Should open-source projects proactively fork and maintain essential libraries, or is it better to push for community-driven maintenance efforts? :thinking:

Additionally, how can package managers like npm, PyPI, and Cargo help identify and warn users about potentially unmaintained dependencies before they become a problem? :thinking: Checked https://stackoverflow.com/questions/913767/how-to-deal-with-dead-open-source-dependencies- UiPath guide related to this and found it quite informative.

Have you faced this issue in your projects? What strategies have worked for keeping dependencies secure and up-to-date? Let’s discuss best practices for ensuring long-term sustainability in open-source development. :upside_down_face:

Thank you !! :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
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Hey @Natalie. Welcome!

These are good questions. One thing I am curious about - where are you coming from? Do you work at one of the package managers, or are you a developer who is running across this problem?

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Welcome @Natalie,

Those are very important topics, which still are undervalued by the community, although some of them are already being discussed in CHAOSS and AboutCode.

WARNING: REFERENCES!

There’s a lot of reading material in there!

But as there isn’t one single, simple solution, all the voices are important, so as to be provide all the information for the project maintainers.

Would you like to join one of the next Sustain sessions so we could talk a little more about this?

Sustain Together sessions

virtual room

Every other Thursday at 19:00-20:00 UTC

I suppose the next one is on 6th of March

I’d like to know your insights on this problems.

All the best,

2 Likes
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Yep. Forking (copying source) and patching is what maintainers of Linux distros do. As you may see from the popularity of Linux, that is a good strategy. Making a better tools for that would be awesome (sharing patches with upstream, signing good patches, giving kudos to forks and getting status of authors).

Blender mafia model - be a good friend with developers. Again, the popularity speaks about the strategy.

Let’s practice practices and discussions discuss. :grin: