Co-opt popular abandonware opensource project?

Question

Here's the scenario:

A popular open source project is used/loved by many but has become stale due to the fact that the last drop came out nearly a year ago. Many bugs/feature requests/fixes have been logged in the interim and everyone is getting by via downloading the trunk and building custom/private builds with the changes incorporated. The copyright is simple -- there is none and the code is in the public domain. The project owner spins the project as community open source and has set up a sourceforge site, but to date (5 years running now) has yet to accept one contributor. In other words the "community" is a community of one.

The project owner takes great pride in the project and has obviously contributed a lot of time/effort but for whatever reason has has seemingly abandoned the project and is unresponsive when offers of help are made.

So, the question, should the community fork the codebase, set up a new community site, and take matters in their own hands?

Answer 1

I say thats what open source is for! If the creator gets upset, tell them they're welcome to merge the changes back into their code base.

Answer 2

Well, if :

• The author doesn't do anything right
  • Especially, doesn't do anything to make his software better
  • Nor helps other help him
• The software is great
• The code is great
• There are several people willing to contribute
  • Who are not afraid of going 'against' the author, if he his too proud
• It is open-source

Why not just act and fork, if everything else failed ?

If this is the only way to get a better quality software, and the license permits its -- well, it's one of the great and powerful things about open source !

Answer 3

You may be interested in checking out the short chapter on ownership of open source from Eric Raymond's Homesteading the Noosphere essay:

• Homesteading the Noosphere: Ownership and Open Source

The full essay is worth reading, but I think the following section is worth highlighting:

For minor projects, it is generally sufficient for a change history included with the project distribution to note the change of ownership. The clear presumption is that if the former owner has not in fact voluntarily transferred control, he or she may reassert control with community backing by objecting publicly within a reasonable period of time.

The third way to acquire ownership of a project is to observe that it needs work and the owner has disappeared or lost interest. If you want to do this, it is your responsibility to make the effort to find the owner. If you don't succeed, then you may announce in a relevant place (such as a Usenet newsgroup dedicated to the application area) that the project appears to be orphaned, and that you are considering taking responsibility for it.

...

Custom demands that you allow some time to pass before following up with an announcement that you have declared yourself the new owner.

...

In general, the more visible effort you make to allow the previous owner or other claimants to respond, the better your claim if no response is forthcoming.

Answer 4

Yes.

One of two things will happen here. Either he continues to do nothing, and the fork becomes the defacto main project, or the competition spurs him into action. Either way, the users win.

I have actually been on the other end of this. I had several projects I used to run. When my third kid was born and the other two started doing after-school stuff, it all just became too much. When I was approached by some users about forking the project, I was quite pleased. Nobody wants to see all that work they put into something just die.