I understand maintaining open source is a lot of work and why someone might want to call it a day - but this is probably the least professional way someone could do it. People depend on this software. It is inconsiderate to just move it to private instead of taking the time to hand it off to someone else.
I'm 80% through building an API using actix-web. Time to reassess whether or not I should start over - wonder what my client will think if I bring that one up? I hope there is a community fork with enough momentum to keep the project alive.
You don't get to invoke professionalism, or lack thereof in regards to some individuals work they've made available for free.
Open source gives you access to source code to do with as you please. Storing your own copy is a good idea if it's something critical to your endeavors. The possibility of having to maintain anything of that nature yourself is always a risk.
Expecting, demanding, or begging for anything except what the author willingly, and happily takes upon themselves is exploitation, pure and simple.
If you think about it, trying to coerce an author/maintainer into doing anything they willingly and explicitly have commited to, is no different than employing bullying, group pressure, and other social/psycholgical manipulation techniques to get whatever outcome others deem useful to themselves.
Yes, something as trivial as complaining about the lack of response to a question can easily be seen as being abusive when there is no established relationship or expectation, no quid pro quo, or similar.
Getting free access to someones work is amazing, and nobody should ever have to face what so many maintainers have to face today in the form of unreasonable expectations and outright bullying.
I used to lead a volunteer organization. I had many people depending on me for what I provided. Eventually, it became too much and I needed to step down.
A) I could have just left, let the organization collapse on itself, burnt every individual, organization and volunteer that depended on me - and just said, "doesn't matter was a volunteer organization."
B) I could have taken the time to ensure that there is a system in place such that the organization stays afloat, supporting the individuals, organizations, volunteers that are dependent upon it while it finds a new leader.
Either of those choices were mine to make - but I wouldn't be surprised at all if someone called me unprofessional if had picked A.
> You don't get to invoke professionalism, or lack thereof in regards to some individuals work they've made available for free.
Plenty of people do exactly that: they point to work that they've made available for free on their GitHub as proof that they have the required skills and attitudes for professional work. The former Actix-web maintainer also used to do this, via their LinkedIn page. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Linking a hobby project isn't necessarily meant to say anything about attitude at work. At work, the expected attitude might very well be that you have to bend over for and pamper customers and deal with no end of bullshit. Or maybe the expectation is that you never interact with customers directly, everything goes through customer support / sales / executives (after being checked by legal). A hobby project, by contrast, is your kingdom, and you can reject bullshit and/or have fun or just never respond to tickets without a patch because it's your free time and your pet project.
If I link my stuff or show it to a prospective employer, it's meant to show them that I can code. Nothing more. If they want to read too much into it and dismiss me as unprofessional because they found a cat meme, Theo quote, or link to hello.jpg, it's their loss not mine. Fuck 'em. Kinda unprofessional of them.
>I understand maintaining open source is a lot of work and why someone might want to call it a day - but this is probably the least professional way someone could do it.
Why would he be obliged to do it in a professional way? He's not being paid.
I'm 80% through building an API using actix-web. Time to reassess whether or not I should start over - wonder what my client will think if I bring that one up? I hope there is a community fork with enough momentum to keep the project alive.