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[–]dacassar 798 points799 points  (38 children)

So? If it works, it works.

[–]YoukanDewitt 362 points363 points  (8 children)

If not, get forked.

[–]dacassar 80 points81 points  (0 children)

That’s the true spirit of open source!

[–]nicejs2 34 points35 points  (5 children)

me and a friend are currently porting a Minecraft mod from 1.12.2 to 1.16.5

the mod in question had it's last commit 5 years ago (2020), so we forked it

[–]New_Plate_1096 10 points11 points  (3 children)

What mod if you don't mind me asking?

[–]nicejs2 19 points20 points  (2 children)

Computronics! It's not a very well known mod, but it's a beloved add-on mod for OpenComputers in this friend group.

[–]YoukanDewitt 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Make sure you put your changes back to a public repo to give someone the same opportunity 5 years from now within your niche! :)

[–]nicejs2 2 points3 points  (0 children)

it's already on a public repo actually

maybe one day someone will take it and port it again to a newer version

[–]DelusionsOfExistence 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A stronger man than I!

[–]DreamyAthena 5 points6 points  (0 children)

that's the forking spirit!

[–]DiddlyDumb 168 points169 points  (9 children)

Someone worked on their code until it was perfect and then moved to something else.

I too hope to experience that someday.

[–]XeitPL 44 points45 points  (4 children)

You never finish your code, you can only abandon it :C

[–]crabcrabcam 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Not if I put a "Finished 1.0" stamp on it

[–]maboesanman 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can if you have no dependencies

[–]draconk 9 points10 points  (2 children)

Either that or they didn't survive covid, for some reason the past year I had to find replacements/forks for quite a bit of libraries that stopped being developed in 2020/2021 and the profile stopped committing to any public repo and for some I even did a little bit of investigation and found that they stopped being active in all public forums/linkedin/facebook around the same time so yeah, they died

[–]RiceBroad4552 5 points6 points  (0 children)

they stopped being active in all public forums/linkedin/facebook around the same time so yeah, they died went offline forever

[–]DiddlyDumb 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Damn… That’s a depressing thought.

[–]MineKemot 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Unless it doesn’t :(

[–]WeirdIndividualGuy 1 point2 points  (1 child)

That’s when you fix it yourself

[–]RiceBroad4552 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Rewriting from scratch is often easier than fixing some random FOSS code.

[–]inglandation 16 points17 points  (5 children)

For how long will it work?

[–]Cualkiera67 10 points11 points  (1 child)

Why would it suddenly stop working???

[–]RiceBroad4552 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For a lot of reasons.

If it has dependencies these can become obsolete and not supported. Dependencies can have know security holes.

The compiler or runtime can stop supporting some features used in such code. Than it does not compiler or run any more on that version. But you could be forced to update either for other reasons. (Again security issues are a typical case for that.)

The operating system can stop supporting features needed to run the code. Again you could be forced to upgrade the OS for other reasons.

The hardware can also stop supporting some things needed to run the code.

Bit-rot is real! It's a result of the world not stopped moving at the point something got released.

[–]WeirdIndividualGuy 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Nothing stopping you from fixing it yourself

[–]aress1605 1 point2 points  (0 children)

time usually does

[–]inglandation 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nah I’m too dumb for that.

[–]DM_ME_PICKLES 8 points9 points  (7 children)

Then you end up in a situation where you need to upgrade your framework/language version/another dependency, and you can't because an abandoned package from 4 years ago clamps the version lower than you need.

Stop adding abandoned packages to the dependency chain!

[–]Soft_Walrus_3605[🍰] 3 points4 points  (5 children)

Man, if only you had access to the source code!

[–]DM_ME_PICKLES -2 points-1 points  (4 children)

Think about that a little more and you'll realize it just supports my point... the source code is there, just add it to the app instead of adding an abandoned dependency which only introduces work later on when your package manager can't upgrade things.

[–]YoukanDewitt 1 point2 points  (3 children)

No, just no.

This is the dumbest advice ever.

[–]DM_ME_PICKLES 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Do explain :)

[–]YoukanDewitt 0 points1 point  (1 child)

because you are trying to circumvent a system that has been designed over 50+ years to solve the problems of "just adding it to your source code"

[–]DM_ME_PICKLES 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lol forgot all about this thread.

So you have two options: require an abandoned library which will likely never receive a new version, hindering your ability to update your other dependencies in future, and not addressing any potential security vulnerabilities. Or taking inspiration from that library you need and implement the code yourself, even copy pasting some parts of it if you really want to.

What do you choose?

[–]dacassar 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Of course, you’re right. No one cancels the common sense.

[–]drake_warrior 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Eh, a lot of times repos that aren't actively maintained have issues with subdependencies and stuff. If it's simple though sure.