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Cool but abandoned applications

Submitted by Johannes on Tue, 2005-11-01 10:53. Bag of Software
Bag of Software

I don't know if it can be proven statistically but I seem to come across an ever increasing number of incredibly useful GNOME based applications which have been abandoned by their former developers, even though there is no viable alternative to them.

Lately I found that at least three apps which have found to be stable, useful and without alternative in the GNOME environment have been either officially abandoned or are slowly fading into oblivion. I wonder if places like gnomefiles.org could be instrumental in helping to find new parents for those poor orphans.

Those applications include

  • Planner This project management application formerly known as MrProject has been officially orphaned by its lead developer Richard Hult on 30. August 2005. So far, no takers have shown up. Planner has been on my GNOME desktop ever since the days of GNOME 1.4. It is an excellent tool to visualize and manage moderately complex projects. Functionality is still not complete. But what exists has proven extremely stable and reliable to me. To my knowledge, no other Gtk/GNOME based project management application is either avaible nor being developed to date.
  • GParted is closest Free software has ever gotten to produce a replacement for tools such as Partition Magic or Acronis Disk Director. Based on libparted, it is far more than a graphical version of GNU parted. It seemslessly integrates a number of command line tools, enabling it to manipulate, shrink, create or move many different file systems, including even the infamous NTFS. (A complete feature list is here: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/features.php)

    At the same time, GParted strongly adheres to GNOME's fundamendal principles of simplicity, cleanliness and elegance.

    Following release 0.0.8 on 22 Dec 2004, development has been stalled due to time constraints as the news page explains. He has not declared the project abandoned, but still, almost a year of silence speaks for itself.

  • PAN - the only unix newsreader ever to get a perfect score on the Good Net-Keeping Seal of Approval evaluations has seen its latest stable release in August 2003. Whoever wanted a really cool newsreader but had no intention to tame the beast known as gnus was very likely to use pan.
  • Captive Although this is not exactly a GNOME application, it uses a Gtk based installer and is in many ways unique. Captive is to date the only solution enabling full NTFS write support in linux without having to pay USD 69 to Paragon for their commercial NTFS for Linux product. Captive uses the original driver ntfs.sys from MS Windows XP, runs them in an environment based on components of the free Windows NT clone ReactOS and a modified version of LUFS (Linux userland file system).

    In October 2004, Jan Kratochvil officially announced the end of his support and development for the package. Since then, no adopter has turned up. Captive was included into Live distributions such as Knoppix to provide full NTFS write support, filling a gap which has been open since at least 1995. Still, no developer has undertaken the changes required to use Captive with Kernels newer than 2.6.8 and ntfs.sys drivers newer than Windows XP service pack 1.

    These four apps are currently all in a state of limbo, even though they are mature, stable and usable - and without viable alternative. Loosing them would be a pity for any GNOME desktop. What can be done to save them? Maybe the GNOME community should develop a mechanism similar to what exists in the Debian project: Work needing and prospective packages is a corner on the Debian web site containing listings of packages which have been orphaned by their former maintainers or for which the current maintainers request a new adopter. Anyone with the necessary skills can pick a particular package from this list and adopt it in order to prevent it from being dropped from the distribution. Maybe, gnomefiles.org could be used to serve a similar purpose. It should be extended by a section named "Orphaned applications" (or something else, which sounds cooler) where developers, weary of their job could request adopters instead of silently letting their wonderful work become obsolete. Sure, I have no idea if this will really make a difference, but it is probably worth trying.

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some insights

Submitted by Anonymous George on Fri, 2005-11-04 19:39.

Hello everyone,

it is true some rather intresting projects get abandoned by their developers or shall I say their artists. Most of them are sculptures made out of C (or any other language). And this is the biggest handicap of those programs. They aren't engineered they get crafted.

So some projects reach a point were it gets hard to an features, because there have to be so much changes to the rest of the code. Some coders get frustrated to recraft thousands of lines just to get one thing working. And in the end it gets harder and harder to debug.

Certainly such project will stop.

Another cause for abandonance of projects is time. Some projects are coded by small groups, where all are working part time on the project. And when they for example made their degree in what ever, they go of and start working on a job somewhere. Most of them stop then working on their old project. They don't have the time for it.

One very popular project nowadays had this problem. It is called the gimp. But thanks god a lot of people helped to get it back on track.

Such things can happen but for most projects it won't, because their not so widely used by coders.

A third cause is, that software gets obsolete. Classical news feeds were great several years ago, but since the WWW emerged, other channels of information came up. Also the nn gots bloated and nowadays such service is not included by your ISP or university computing center anymore. So news reader get less important.

A project of mine, which was able to trigger the modem on the server from any client on the network. Including accounting and billing. And including the ability to share the line with different users. Got abondened when we moved to our new home and got an 128kb/s ISDN leased line. Right now we are using ADSL but there is no need for such a service anymore.

So I stopped maintaining it, and the applets for that service got out of date. They were for GNOME 1.2 and early GTK+.

Greetings
Reiner

gparted status by Anonymous George

Pan -> Evolution or Thunderbird

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2005-11-02 23:21.

Thunderbird 1.5 that will be released in a month have a much improved news reader, so this will mostly make Pan obsolite.

Doesn't Evolution have a news reader?

If not, it ought to have. It would make much sense.

Yeah, sure

Submitted by Anonymous George on Thu, 2005-11-03 08:15.

Thunderbird 1.5 that will be released in a month have a much improved news reader, so this will mostly make Pan obsolite.

Err, last I checked Thunderbird was unstable and had only a poor imitation of a GTK interface that was not GNOME integrated at all. Not that PAN has no weaknesses, but at least it's a real GTK application. Obsoleted by Thunderbird? You make me laugh.

So you are one of those: by Anonymous George

Pan "bloated" and

Submitted by FooBarWidget on Fri, 2005-11-04 09:15.

Pan "bloated" and "unstable"? Where do you get that from?

Pan IS bloated by Anonymous George

Planner Lives!

Submitted by kmaute on Wed, 2005-11-02 18:56.

Planner is certainly not abandoned. Its true that Richard renounced his maintainership of Planner in August, but since then I've been working with his coaching to take it on. I made an announcement on the Planner and Planner-dev mailing lists earlier this month.

There seems to be a problem with the archive, and no archives have been created since August, so unless you subscribe to the list(s), you'd be unaware. Richard has promised to take a look at the archive.

We could certainly use some hackers, though, so if anyone wants to get started, please join us on the planner-dev list!

--
Kurt Maute
Kurt@Maute.us

Planner is very important ... by Anonymous George

Gnucash

Submitted by dmytro on Wed, 2005-11-02 14:20.

Gnucash is the only full-featured open-source accounting software, yet because of shortage of developers, the GTK-2 version is not yet ready.

I've never cared for the

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2005-11-02 17:57.

I've never cared for the direction that GnuCash is heading (for instance, incorporating an Internet browser). Fortunately several other projects are also attempting to meet the need for serious accounting software on the Linux desktop. It would be terrific if one of the following projects (GnuCash included) would mature enough to become a serious contender to proprietary offerings like Quicken:

-Divifund
-Gnofin
-Grisbi
-Kurush
-MyBudget

Some more research about finance managers

Submitted by cstim on Thu, 2005-11-03 04:39.

Strange comment about the gnucash development above, since what you mention has no relation whatsoever to the discussions on the gnucash mailinglists over virtually the last 2 years. Whatever.

But as for the other projects your should spend some more research:

-Divifund: new name for MyBudget, had some development in May 2005 but almost zero traffic on the mailing list
-Gnofin: is dead. Last release in 2000 and zero traffic on mailing list since.
-Grisbi: is very alive and has been mentioned favorably in that LWN article recently, but still has some serious shortcomings compared to KMyMoney or GnuCash
-Kurush: some release in 2004 but almost zero traffic on the mailing list since.
-MyBudget, is renamed to Divifund

cstim

Re: Some more research about finance managers

Submitted by Anonymous George on Thu, 2005-11-03 13:29.

My apologies if I have an inaccurate impression of GnuCash. I am not on the mailing list so I drew my observation from a previous visit to the GnuCash website. Perhaps I should revisit GnuCash and explore its features. :)

As for the other programs, they illustrate the point of this article--there are GTK+ Free Software projects waiting on the sidelines in need of attention from developers. I do not expect all of these attempts at a personal finance manager to be revived. However, I wanted to point out the abundance of code and time that has already been invested in this area so that hopefully it can be put to good use in the future.

other (orphaned?) projects...

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2005-11-02 14:10.

Not sure if these have been abandoned or have just stagnated but they are also worthwhile and could use some affection from developers:

Passepartout - sole open source, GTK+ desktop publishing app. The last release was November 2004.

Gpaint - simple drawing program for GNOME. The website was last updated November 2002.

Gscore - musical notation frontend for lilypond.

GNOME Photo Printer - drag and drop app that simplifies scaling and printing pictures

InkBlot (official page seems to be down) and GMSO - both are printer ink-level monitors

Still using Gnome Commander

Submitted by misGnomer on Thu, 2005-11-03 16:44.

Gnome Commander is still my favourite file manager as a decent compromise between speed and convenience. The last official beta (v1.1.6) was released nearly two years ago but it still works fine (repackaged?).

Of course, in the file manager department there are also other alternatives, not exluding the newbie-oriented Nautilus, so it's not as if the orphaning of Gnome Commander is a severy body blow to GNOME, but one wonders how nice GC might be today if it was still under development.

Passepartout - sole open

Submitted by Anonymous George on Thu, 2005-11-03 08:20.

Passepartout - sole open source, GTK+ desktop publishing app. The last release was November 2004.

Yeah, I though of that too when I saw the article. A real shame, especially because the developers seemed to actually care about the HIG.

Gtranslator...

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2005-11-02 10:38.

Ok, its not orphaned, nor totally abandoned, but this tool needs *tons* of love!

Dashboard

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2005-11-02 10:21.

What about Dashboard? Nat, any news?

I belive it has been put on by Anonymous George

XPN for PAN

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2005-11-02 10:01.

XPN is a pretty good news reader. One man project though.

gparted isn't abandoned

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2005-11-02 09:00.

CVS was quite active, the News page just seems to be stale. But there *should* be a release soon (Ubuntu has the CVS version.)

parted just keeps getting better

Submitted by misGnomer on Thu, 2005-11-03 16:27.

Let's also rejoice that the actual little engine behind the GParted GUI, called parted, is very much alive: the latest version (v1.6.25) was released around the time this article was posted... :-)

From what I understand by Anonymous George

Unfortunately this is how

Submitted by rehdon on Wed, 2005-11-02 08:50.

Unfortunately this is how open source software works: if no one feels like working to X, and X happens to be uninteresting to distribution packagers, X is definitely on the verge of being orphaned.

In the case of the applications mentioned above this turns out to be particularly painful, as they (with the possible exception of Captive, which has alternatives) are very useful apps.

rehdon

But on the flip side

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2005-11-02 21:06.

Because it's open source, the orphaning of X doesn't mean the death of X. If anyone comes down the road in a few months wanting to work on one of these programs, they'll be able to. With closed source software, if the original developer abandons it, it's gone.

Neither way...

Submitted by claus on Thu, 2005-11-03 13:23.

IMHO, you both are right and wrong at the same time:

1.) Open Source doesn't mean 'Non-Commercial' by definition so users could (theoretically) pay people to maintain older open source code.

2.) Factually, developers make open source projects for fun (or to learn something), thus we see lots of 'starting-from-scratch' projects (yeah, another editor!). Indeed, open code means somebody could pick it up but who is going to do this with, say, 3 or 4 years old code? Yes. Nobody.

However, there's no need to complain about it. Without financial rewards, the dead-projects problem is indeed tied to Open Source software: Nobody's going to maintain smaller, less interesting projects just for fun without compensation.

However, recently a code repository started that features financial contributions from users. It's not yet there yet, but when it will be, there will be less dead projects (hopefully, at least).

Blah blah blah by Anonymous George

It doesn't matter how many

Submitted by FooBarWidget on Thu, 2005-11-03 12:13.

It doesn't matter how many people are able to program. With closed source, you can have an army of people who can program and STILL not being able to revive a program. With open source, it's POSSIBLE. The possibility can make a huge difference. The Ragnarok Online software world has proven exactly that point: ALL closed source tools eventually died off, while the best open source tools survived.

How many people exercise their freedom of speech to the fulliest extend, by writing critisizing the government every day? Not too many. By your reasoning democracy is useless just because the majority doesn't use their right of free speech to the fulliest extend.

The funny thing is that

Submitted by Unanimous_George on Wed, 2005-11-02 09:23.

The funny thing is that while OSS should maximize every developers contribution, value their time spent coding and require least possible amount of maintenance, things are the other way around. An OSS application needs constant care and fiddling, while API-s, ABI-s, file locations and such change every heartbeat.

Strange paradox, I'd say, and personally I am not happy about it :(

In essence, an operating system is a habitat, and the more it provides, the more abundant life there will be, in all forms, sizes and diets (can you consider proprietary software carnivorous ;). OSS terrain looks like something subarctic to me - it's habitable, but keeps you always in motion, scrounging food, warmth and so on. Yes, this is probably good for evolution, but evolution is not the aim of life and constant development is not the aim of an operating system as such.

This isn't a problem with

Submitted by FooBarWidget on Wed, 2005-11-02 09:37.

This isn't a problem with open source, it is a problem with unmaintained software in general, whether closed source or open source. I've been watching the Ragnarok Online (don't worry about it if you don't know what it is) third party software community for a few years now. The vast majority of RO software are closed source software developed by amateurs/kids. And every single one of those closed source software, without exception, end up unmaintained and non-functional. The only software that survived time are some of the open source tools.

In other words: while open source does not guarantee that apps will stay maintained, it at least gives the POSSIBILITY to be maintained. With closed source freeware apps, that isn't even possible, and force people to reinvent the wheel over and over and over again (I've seen this happening dozens of times).

Yup

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2005-11-02 11:46.

The fact that an article like this can be written - a call to developers to work on abandoned applications - is fantastic.

Yes, you are correct in that

Submitted by Unanimous_George on Wed, 2005-11-02 10:23.

Yes, you are correct in that OSS gives a possibility of someone picking up the maintenance. On the other hand, there are numerous thing that can be done, so that projects would require less maintenance.

I'm not familiar with Ragnarok Online, but I can give you an example of my own. I experimented with Zeta a little while back and was amazed to see applications from years past just working.

As OSS is maturing, I hope that interface stability is one of the things that will become a lot more important. And in the end OSS will have the best of both worlds :)

I remember reading that

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2005-11-02 08:32.

I remember reading that fedora had a bounty for planner. As of parted, ubuntu is using it to develop their ubuntu express installer, so maybe contacting them would be wise to see if development is stalled at all.

Another app that hasn't produced any new version is gnome-dia. Lastest stable release is 0.94 (from 2002?)

gnome-dia

Submitted by rompe on Thu, 2005-11-03 02:21.

Debian Sid has version 0.94.0+CVS20050917-3 of the dia packages, so it seems to me that at least in CVS there is still something alive.

Maybe they are just suffering from the same old perfectionism as Debian Stable does: Waiting for the perfect version to release for so long that users lose interest in the meantime...

Ubuntu developers are working on GParted

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2005-11-02 13:58.

I have done a few patches for GParted as an Ubuntu Developer, as mentioned above we are planning on using in our installer in general.

please make it cross platform by Anonymous George

captive alternatives

Submitted by Anonymous George on Wed, 2005-11-02 07:34.

there are ntfs write alternatives
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/ but full write access is still only in CVS but seems very stable at here.