Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
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To the developer of Sigil: please do not take the following as an offence, as I do not mean any disrespect to you or anyone.
What is happening here is the one thing I always dread when starting to rely on an open-source product that is not backed by some sort of company or organisation; they are often one or two-man projects, and if something happens, they are in jeopardy of being abandoned.
You are still setting up a repository, and keeping an eye onto the program, maybe to see if there will be contributions in the future, but often even that doesn't happen.
It seems that all open source projects that are not backed by some huge organisation must face this fate some day. SourceForge and other sites are littered with once-promising projects, abandoned because the single maintainer either didn't have the time or the motivation anymore to develop it further. Even in Linux itself, people are often using software with known bus and missing functionality just because there is nothing else, and no-one willing or able to maintain that software.
The mantra "It is open-source, anyone who wants can pick this up" is great in theory, but in practice, it doesn't really work, except for the 800 pound gorilla's of the OSS world. Allthough this world has 7 billion people in it, the chance that someone else will take up development of Sigil is very slim indeed.
I hope it will happen, because it's a great program, and, IMHO, as neccesary as Calibre itself.
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Certainly more necessary than Calibre, IMHO.
And, if memory serves--I could be wrong, God knows--I think I said when Valloric said he was leaving that this was exactly what I thought was going to happen. Without making it a paid product--for which I was thoroughly castigated as an evil capitalist scumbag, at the time--there's inadequate support to make it worthwhile for the developer. And now...we're here. And believe me, I feel very sorry for John. This certainly wasn't what he agreed to do, be the main developer for the project, and I doubt we're going to find a boatload more volunteers to support the coding. I could--and I hope I will be proven to--be wrong.
Hitch