Ask Slashdot: Attracting Developers To Abandonware? 321
phlawed writes "I've been a Linux user since the previous millennium. I came from OS/2, which I really liked. I quickly felt at home with icewm, using a suitably tweaked config to give me something resembling Presentation Manager. I may have commented on that before. Today, I find myself in a position where my preferred 'environment' is eroding. The only force keeping icewm rolling these days is the distribution package maintainers. I can't code in any meaningful way, nor do I aspire to. I could easily pay for a supported version of icewm, but I can't personally pay someone enough to keep it alive. I'd love it if someone took a personal interest in the code, to ensure that it remains up to date, or to make it run on Wayland or whatever. I want someone to own the code, be proud of it. Is there a general solution for this situation? How do I go about drumming up interest for an old project?"
Re:Welcome to Linux (Score:5, Informative)
While on the topic about fragmentation... Android is another type of linux.
Switch...? (Score:5, Informative)
http://alternativeto.net/software/icewm/ [alternativeto.net]
http://linux.descargargratis.co/icewm/alternatives [descargargratis.co]
Re:Welcome to Linux (Score:3, Informative)
By that metric Playstation 4 is another type of BSD, so I guess it's the same as using linux, right?
Crowdfunding specific compatibility features (Score:5, Informative)
You might want to check into a class of crowdfunding sites that exist to fund features in free and open source software. The two main ones I could find are:
https://www.bountysource.com/ [bountysource.com]
https://bountyoss.com/ [bountyoss.com]
Re:Relax the License (Score:4, Informative)
Well, BSD generally attracks fewer developes than GPL, and you need to own the copyright to change the license, but outside of that it's a reasonable idea.
An answer (but didn't quite get your point). (Score:2, Informative)
First, a short background: I played with OS/2 Warp for a really short time, but had a lot of things to do and then Linux came. So, no cigar here.
I have a couple computers -- the most powerful run KDE4(Mageia); for the weaker/older I've been experimenting with Xfce and LXDE and since the latter will use Qt, I'll probably use it where KDE is not possible.
Finally, for really weak machines I've been trying some simpler distros. Porteus is incredible nimble, but I'd rather have a Debian-based distro. Which led me to...
antiX: a distro which can use a selection of window managers, iceWM included. I'd recommend that you try jwm, as others already said, 'cause I found it to be configurable to my taste (btw, I don't click a window to raise it; I click its title... that is because I may want to work with a certain window disposition and even paste things on a window I don't want to bring up and wreck my desktop layout).
Now, what I don't get:
If you got an older machine (or are helping lots of people in need like Ken from Reglue/Helios), ok, I recommend jwm by Joe Wing if you really need to stick to something akin to icewm.
If you got a decent machine, depending on its age, I'd suggest waiting for LXDE-Qt and perhaps using Xfce in the mean time... it can be tweaked to look like iceWM (though I have no idea about OS/2's capabilities).
Or, better yet, go for KDE4. It can be configured to work like mostly anything... from Windows (yuck!) to OS X... though the ride is not without emotions. Here the problem is the opposite: "how can I make those KDE developers stay put and don't change things so fast, or at least be better at marketing the new features?").
I don't get why you don't want a desktop, since a desktop can be made to work just like a window manager (for the most cases, at least). I've seen your comment explaining it, but certainly you don't think icons are mandatory in KDE (or Gnome, btw)...
And, btw, iceWM is nice. It's development slowed, maybe, because it already attained perfection. Why are you worried about it?
Re:Android is not Linux ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Android is not Linux ... (Score:5, Informative)
You're expecting too much.
Android is just another embedded *nix. I'm happy that it's Linux. You shouldn't expect it to have a whole bunch of scripting languages, and unnecessary servers.
With all that said, it is a functional embedded system, where you *do* have the ability. to extend it do to all kinds of neat things.
They provided hooks to just about everything in Java. I'm not terribly delighted with that decision, but it's what they went with.
For most purposes, play is their package manager. For the majority of users, they'll never open a terminal. I do 99% of my phone stuff through the happy little touchscreen. That's the nice interface provided.
If you really want the CLI package manager, you'll find pm [android.com], which does just about everything you'd expect from a package manager.
You can get Apache, Perl, and pretty much whatever else you want on there. Is it going to be like developing for an x86 server or desktop? Not really. It's a different platform.
If you're going to be developing for distribution, and not just for yourself, I'd recommend about the Android way to do it.. If you're doing it yourself, grab a copy of Perl for Android, and enjoy.
If you're going to complain, well, that's up to you. At least research it a little.
Re: Welcome to Linux (Score:1, Informative)
Android user land is NOT open source fully.
The AOSP is.
The Google proprietary code in an Android product IS NOT. (gmail, gmaps, sync plugins, ...)
Re:what's there to be done? (Score:3, Informative)
I agree it has been fairly resistant to breakage/bitrot. That may say something about the code quality.
But do you actually compile from the original tarball? The last tarball is pushing 3 years by now.
Building it gives an indication it needs an oilchange and a new filter.
The bugtracker has a fair number of patches which appear to make sense. As do various distributions.
So the short answer is: maintenance
The longer answer is really up to whoever takes ownership of the code.
Motive? (Score:3, Informative)