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captaincurrie

Member

From: /dev/random

Registered: 2013-11-01

Posts: 82

General rules when a project 'dies'

Hi,

So i've been looking into switching network managers.
I've always heard good things about Wicd and was going to give it a shot.
Then i heard that it was not being maintained anymore.

Is that a good enough reason to not use it?
What is it about a project 'dieing' that makes it unusable?
Are there situations where a 'dead' project is still perfectly good?

Also, is anyone still using Wicd?

TheSaint

Member

From: my computer

Registered: 2007-08-19

Posts: 1,523

Re: General rules when a project 'dies'

I'm using it.
Obsolescence will happen when other dependencies changed so bad to cause malfunctioning to the project.
It seems that systemd gaining ground to cope also in networking. One day I'll start to think about it.

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do it good first, it will be faster than do it twice the saint

mrunion

Member

From: Jonesborough, TN

Registered: 2007-01-26

Posts: 1,938

Website

Re: General rules when a project 'dies'

I still use it. In fact, I couldn't get netctl/networkmanager to work on this machine. I didn't spend more than 15 minutes on it because it was a fresh install. I just tried wicd and it worked. So that's what I'm using.

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Matt

"It is very difficult to educate the educated."

ShadowKyogre

Member

From: Hell! XP No... I'm not telling

Registered: 2008-12-19

Posts: 476

Website

Re: General rules when a project 'dies'

I'm still using it. Works fantastically since python2-urwid hasn't been updated to 1.3.0 in the official repositories, but it'll need to be eventually since that causes the ncurses interface to not work. I'll try to work with the people still interested in maintaining it to include a patch for that.

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For every problem, there is a solution that is:
Clean
Simple and most of all...wrong!
Github page

captaincurrie

Member

From: /dev/random

Registered: 2013-11-01

Posts: 82

Re: General rules when a project 'dies'

Thanks for the replys.

I was looking for more general rules, not exactly pertaining to Wicd, about when to give up using a project
after its been 'depreciated'.

Are you putting yourself at risk by continuing to use such a program?

Like elinks hasn't seen any action in 2 years and i still use it. Am i more vulnerable to the dangers of the internet
because of that?

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,424

Website

Re: General rules when a project 'dies'

If it is genuinely dead, ie, unmaintained, then you are at risk of exposure to vulnerabilities as time goes on. The likelihood of breakage also increases as libraries change.

I moved from wicd to connman and haven't looked back.

There is no way I would browse the web with a browser that wasn't actively maintained. The elinks git log suggests to me that it is maintained, with the last commit two months ago.

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