[Themaintainers] Death of open projects and its rituals?

[Camille E. Acey]

Hi Jan,

This is exactly what I do! Check out my website below!
Camille
Camille E. Acey
The Wind Down[https://wind-down.org] | Stewarding Loss community[https://stewardingloss.com] | Closing Remarks newsletter[https://wind-down.org/newsletter/archive]
New York, NY (GMT -5)
/"Today, I choose to close the door to yesterday and open my mind, my heart, and my spirit to the blessings of this moment."/ - Iyanla Vanzant[https://www.wind-down.org/2024/01/03/morning-closure-affirmation-by-iyanla-vanzant/]

Mar 6, 2025 9:45:35 AM Jan Dittrich <dittrich.c.jan at gmail.com>:

> Hello Maintainers,
> 
> I recently started thinking about rituals for and memories of the end ("death") of projects [1]. How to send-off that project or idea of a future?
> 
> This was based on some conversations with a colleague in academia as well as this call for papers [2]
> 
> In particular, I wondered about the end of "open" projects, i.e. ones that say that their essence is "the code" and/or "the data" like open source software or open knowledge projects. I notices that when these projects are often clearly not "alive" anymore (that is, there is no community around the project that keeps it running or that could be asked),  these projects are not really "dead" either, since they are culturally assumed that someone could just come and continue. Thus, there seems to be a great hesitation to actually declare such projects as ended. However, there imagined end is often used to call for action, both inside such communities ("this feature could be the end of...") and outside of them (like the implied danger to Wikipedia in Wikimedia’s donation banners)
> 
> I would be curious if you know
> -  interesting alternatives to the metaphors of "alive", "dead" and "grief" in this context (or alternatively, ideas on these metaphors and how they apply!) [3]
> -  texts about the rituals around ends of projects, particularly ones that have such a complicated relationship to a clear end as the mentioned ideas of open (data/software) projects.
> -  texts about the rhetorical use of imagined ends of (open) projects [4]
> 
> Kind Regards,
>  Jan
> 
> 
> [1]: Or, instead of projects one could take a larger perspective and, a bit awkwardly say: "the not-happening of a future that seemed attainable by ones activity" (in contrast to "it would be great if things would just magically be so that...")
> 
> [2] In German: https://www.soziopolis.de/ausschreibungen/call/aufhoeren-beenden-und-schluss-machen-in-organisationen.html  ("Stopping, ending and breaking off in organizations")
> 
> [3] I have thought of ossification, glaciation, weathering and decomposition so far
> 
> [4] Might be connected to community appropriate "extreme case formulations" (A. Pomerantz, 1986) and/or my use of the concept in https://www.fordes.de/posts/disappointment_product_community.html
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.stevens.edu/pipermail/themaintainers/attachments/20250306/c3c12645/attachment-0001.htm>