[Themaintainers] Sunsetting/archiving projects

[James Howison]

There was a great presentation on shutting down software infrastructure
services at the Research Software engineers Conference in the UK:
https://rse.ac.uk/conf2018/programme/

"Be Prepared to Be Unpopular: Tips on Shutting Services Down"
Catherine Jones:  https://www.scd.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/Catherine-Jones.aspx

Unfortunately slides not online, but she had some good ones, perhaps drop
her a note?

Cheers,
James Howison

On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 1:24 PM jan <dittrich.c.jan at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Calmille,
>
> (It seems you work in tech, but since there will be people reading along
> who are not doing  tech related stuff, I add some footnotes)
>
> As a software-example:
>
> The web browser Firefox sunsetted the "old" way of  customization for
> adding  custom functions [1] and replaced it with a system called
> WebExtensions. This was done for security reasons, since the old system
> was hard to harden against attacks [2] and hard to maintain and relied
> on a bricolage-y mode of adding the functions [3].
>
> This was interesting for several reasons:
>
> - The existing extension system was rather large, thus stopping it meant
> loosing attractiveness for some users; I assume their absolute numbers
> are not large, but they tend to be vocal, tech savvy and multipliers who
> convince their friends etc.
> - It is very hard this in open source projects, since people feel
> strongly about "their" software AND because disabling the
> "do-as-you-like-mode" of extensions can be framed as "constraining user
> freedom", an open source culture anti-value.
> - They had a long build up to this, I think going back as far as 2009
> with several ideas and prototypes to replace their extension system. At
> some point they settled with their current system [4] and scaffolded a
> transition period. Probably one can write a PhD with the 10 year material.
> - They actually did it :)
>
>
> Jan
>
>
> [1] Enabling 3rd parties like users to plug in new functionality into
> Firefox.
> [2] Attacks like going to a webpage and the computer being infected by a
> virus ("drive-by") or people reading your previously visited webpages etc.
> [3] I am no expert on this, but I think it used be based on changing
> existing functionality so any change to existing functions breaks the
> extensions, potentially.
> [4] Which is very similar to Chrome’s, googles web browser which
> currently is the major way of web access, much like Microsoft’s Internet
> Explorer was in the late 90s and early 2000s.
>
>
>
> On 16.01.19 21:32, Camille E. Acey wrote:
> > Dear Maintainers,
> >
> > I'm trying to pull together some guidance on sunsetting/archiving
> > projects and thought this group would likely be a fount of information.
> > I look forward to checking out your suggestions!
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> > Camille
> > Collective for Liberation, Ecology, and Technology - https://colet.space
> > --
> > Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
> >
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> >
>
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-- 
James Howison

Associate Professor and Director of Doctoral Studies
School of Information
University of Texas at Austin
http://james.howison.name
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