The unmaintained repo has a link in the readme pointing to the best fork
This is the problem, making the fork known to the userbase of the original software. When the Atom text editor was killed by Microsoft we decided to fork it as Pulsar but it was an uphill struggle to really get the word out. We got a massive boost when the youtuber Distrotube featured us in an episode and again with an itsfoss article but we still routinely find people who have been using Atom without knowing we even exist.
TIL Pulsar exists
You found some more by commenting about it now.
But if the fork is on GitHub there are some ways to search for the most maintained forks, albeit not with the GitHub tools which is unfortunate
Keep in mind that software doesn't have an expiry date. If a piece of software is unmaintained and doesn't have an active fork but it still fulfills your use case and doesn't have any major issues, there's no need to replace it. Some of the software I use hasn't seen any updates in five years but I still use it because it still works.
Edit: As an example, a lot of people still use WinDirStat even though the latest release 1.1.2 is now 17 years old.
I'd say that problems mostly come from the need to update dependencies in case of vulnerabilities being discovered. But not every software needs elevated privileges or can become a vector of attack, I guess
If a software is compromised to allow remote code execution, then the situation is pretty dire even without elevated privileges.
Basically your entire userspace will be compromised, and in terms of personal computing that is pretty much all you can lose.
Desktop - Linux - Yes, likely. If not, here's a flatpak
Desktop - Windows - Maybe it still runs in a compatibility mode?
Desktop - iMac - Here's an emulator, good luck.
Mobile - PostMarketOS - Yes, likely. If not, here's a flatpak
Mobile - Android - Maybe? Try it and see if you get permission denial
Mobile - iPhone - Fuck you, no.
Windows is pretty good with backwards compatibility, probably the best out of anything. I can run Visual Basic apps I wrote in the early 2000s on Windows 11 and they still run fine. Some old 32-bit games work fine too. You can even run some 16-bit Windows 3.0 apps on 32-bit Windows 10 if you manually install NTVDM through the Windows features (it was never ported to 64-bit though)
Linux is okay for backcompat but I'm not sure an app I compiled 20 years ago would still run today.
WinDirStat works but is super slow though. WizTree is a much better modern equivalent.
Yt-dl - > yt-dlp
YT-DL is greater than YT-DLP?
Edit: Oh, it’s an arrow. Got it.
Simplemobiletools --> Fossify is pretty epic
Do the Fossify versions already have new features? I'll still using Simple Mobile Tools from F-Droid, without ads, and am asking if it makes sense to download Fossify apps already
They have material you by default instead of the weird accent theming there was before
Mplayer -> MPV
yo but tbh this gets old.
i just want my stuff to update without me having to find out a year later its unmantained and had a fork all along.
or having to watch the repositories of stuff i use for signs it might be unmantained. i didnt know half the (popular!) stuff mentioned here was abandoned then forked.
libforknotifier when (or even how)?
Yeah, it would be nice if it was easier for devs to just turn over the project to an "official" fork. Unfortunately, I'm sure that would get abused by scammers taking over projects forcefully and adding in malware before anyone notices.
You're spot on with the latter, I've come across a few projects over the years where the ownership is transferred and it's then loaded up with malware or even just instantly abandoned again because the new owner just wants it on their GitHub to get a job or something.
I've come across a few projects over the years where the ownership is transferred and it's then loaded up with malware
See: The Great Suspender
The original developer sold the repo to a new, anonymous maintainer. The new maintainer abandoned the repo but continued updating the Chrome Web Store version of the addon. That version eventually got delisted by Google for including malware.
sandboxie. The final update from the original makers made it open source.
Paperless -> Paperless-ng -> Paperless-ngx
Even better when someone forked it away from proprietary, closed-source, publicly-traded, for-profit, US-based, account-required, training-AI-on-your-code-then-selling-it-back-to-you Microsoft GitHub forge/social media network often with vendor lock-in to some other forge without all that BS.
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