Sunsetting an Open Source Project
Open source projects start with good intentions: a problem to solve, an eager and motivated maintainer, and users and contributors flocking to the project and providing feedback. If everything goes right, a vibrant community and a great solution will emerge.
While putting code out under an open source license is a permanent action, having an open source project isn’t. In Chapter 12, Marketing for Open Source – Advocacy and Outreach, we looked at a chart that describes the life cycle of an open source project; Figure 14.1 illustrates that chart:
Figure 14.1 – Life cycle of an open source project
The backend of the life cycle is Sustain…, which sometimes means the project is just maintained over time. In those cases, there is still usage, but it’s overall considered feature-complete, with any changes or additions solely focused on bug fixes and security issues. One example of an open...
