I posted a graph on LinkedIn. It showed that of the 10 million open source projects tracked by ecosyste.ms, more than half haven’t been updated in two years. I didn’t suggest old was bad or good, but I got a number of replies about most of this software is “done” so it’s fine. We don’t have any evidence either way, I’m unwilling to make any claims about the numbers (yet, I’m working on it). This got me wondering what it would mean for software to be “done”. Which then led to the question is anything ever done? It’s a lot harder to figure this out than I had expected.
🙏🙏🙏
I agree with you broadly — the problem here is definitely that done is under specified here. After reading this, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that for me, you say software is “done” like you say a party is “done” — we’ve stopped working on it and everyone’s gone home. Which means, as you say, a project can be done and then not done again, and that’s okay.