Is NLP.js still maintained?

[louistiti]

Hello there!

I'm eager to gain some insights into the current status of this amazing project.

To the best of my knowledge, the project has been under the care of a group of developers associated with AXA in Spain. Initially, the primary developer was @jesus-seijas-sp. However, it appears that Jesus has since left AXA.

The project has now been taken over by @eric-lara, @ericzon. Additionally, we've been fortunate to have outstanding contributors like @Apollon77, who have been actively submitting new PRs.

Upon reviewing the recent issues and commits, it seems that NLP.js might be lacking new core maintainers. Could someone help to clarify the state and future of NLP.js?

Thanks!

[jesus-seijas-sp]

Hello,

I don't think that this project is maintained or will maintained in the future. It was not even maintained when I was still in AXA.
In my humble opinion, this happens because of several reasons:

1. AXA decided to invest in open source but never had a budget for the projects in Spain, only for France and Switzerland. You can think "This is not a problem, you don't need a budget, only people working on it". Well, the developers have to put in a sheet the hours that they dedicate to every project, and those projects must have a budget behind them, so they can't develop in an open source if there is no budget assigned. When I was working on NLP.js, most of the hours invested were out of office hours, including weekends and holidays.
2. At the beginning, nobody cared about the project. Inside the company, other conversational technologies were used. When the project started to be used for production projects, happened a curious thing: the improvements and tools were private, and not open source. So we got into a situation where some frontends, tools, and plugins were developed actively, but not public.
3. There was a lot of opposition from other departments. I remember two situations that made me especially upset
4. There are a lot of new attractive technologies, like ChatGPT, so I don't know if NLP.js is still something interesting for AXA.

What to do? Well, right now it still works, but nobody is even merging the PRs, and they will not put an external maintainer. So perhaps the best option is to fork the project, accept the PRs, do some active maintenance, and publish it under a different library name if you want that new code to be on the code. I still use it in some projects, mostly the language libraries.

[Apollon77]

In fact then the solution is "easy" ... and I already also wrote emails to offer to be a maintainer and such ... but never got an answer, just "some "activity in merging some PR and such, but then it stopped again.

So in fact the "good way" would be that the responsible people at axa see that this project is still interesting and we move the Repo into an own org on github and start finding developers that way to maintain the project and bring it into a future.

if this not happens - or too unlikely or whatever - then, because it is still MIT licensed, we can simply fork it into a new orga.

@eric-lara or @ericzon WDYT?

Said that ... I just registered https://github.com/nlp-js as a potential place for that ... lets collect interested maintainers :-)

• Apollon77 :-) I'm mainly coming from the smart home area and implement and maintain several projects in this direction, I'm a core developer of the "ioBroker" smart home system and currently very active in implementing Matter standard in JS/TS. Check out my profile to see my reputation. We considered using nlp.js as the engine behind smart home automations and rule system with more natural language processing ins spoken and written form

(PS: Only thing is for me personally that in the meantime I got very caught in implementing the matter standard in javaScript/Typescript, so I might not be available that much, but I could be one of the drivers/organizers/supportes in any case). I did comparable "conversions" (taking over repos from other devs or also "fork like ones") now several times already and (if you like) something about your contact/plans/connections with nlp.js
:-)

So please, if interested (and @eric-lara or @ericzon have no arguments against it), let's convert this issue into the place to collect interested maintainers. So please, if interested, post your github name and some sentences about your Open source background.

[carlos-navarro]

@louistiti , @jesus-seijas-sp , @Apollon77 , we hear you.
To some extent, some specific points you are raising here are true, and yes, we understand your complains and apologize for the current situation.

But the overall image of AXA you are portraying in your comments is absolutely wrong. And let me explain:

• AXA Group do care about Open Source and do invest in Open Source. AXA is a FINOS member since last year and we are actively working in collaboration with Red Hat and GitHub, two of our partners and key actors in the Open Source space, to improve our Open Source Process, Program and Office to better manage our OSS.
• Even if we are not focused int this precise technology today, NLP.js is important to us. And even more if it's still interesting for the community. And yes, you are right, we are not investing enough effort today. As said, we are already working on fixing it and we apologize for the current situation.

About the future on NLP.js:
I believe forking NLP.js it's not the good solution for any of us. I take your point and will discuss with my colleagues in the OSPO which is the best optihon for AXA and the community to avoid any legal issue or copyright infringement.
In the meanwhile, please, volunteers interested in maintaining this project, contact us at opensource@axa.com.
Thanks for your support!

[Apollon77]

@carlos-navarro you got mail :-)

[gramsaroli]

Hi, Is there any update about project maintenance?

[carafelix]

Is there a running fork already?

[kibertoad]

I've shot an email the the address provided. Considering that there were no updates in the thread, I assume that chances of anything coming out of this are slim, but I'd still prefer to keep any developments within this repo.

If all everything fails, @Apollon77, would you be interested in the plan B with https://github.com/nlp-js? I can volunteer some maintenance effort there.

[Apollon77]

I will also write the axa guys again.

[kibertoad]

@Apollon77 I didn't get any response, I assume you didn't either. Should we proceed with the fork?

[carlos-navarro]

Hi guys, sorry for the late reply.
@Apollon77, @kibertoad, please, give me just one week, a couple at most, and we will close this topic forever and for the good of the project.
We are evaluating all the options with a our legal guy and get back to you in a few days.

[kibertoad]

@carlos-navarro Any updates?