Scour project maintenance 🛠️

[Jamim]

👋🏻 Hello @oberstet and @Ede123,

First of all, thank you for all your work on this great tool! 🙇🏼

🏚️

Sadly, this repository now looks completely abandoned.
There are dozens of issues awaiting resolution and over 10 PRs awaiting feedback.

🏡

I understand you probably have no spare time to spend on Scour, but would you mind considering delegating maintenance to some community members that you can trust to keep the project going?

🔗

Related issue:

• inkscape/inkscape-docs/documentation#43 (closed)

Best regards!

[oberstet]

I understand you probably have no spare time to spend on Scour, but would you mind considering delegating maintenance to some community members that you can trust to keep the project going?

yes, you hit the nail, classic OSS problem. I should say, I am still using it, because it just serves an important piece in web work puzzles at least. but personally, I have just spent too much time doing unpaid work in my life, and bills need to get paid.

anyways, @Ede123 not sure what's your take, but taking in other community members to be able to do or push work, I'd absolutely welcome this!

[Ede123]

Yes, absolutely! I've not been able to contribute any time to the project myself lately. I'd certainly welcome getting new people involved in the development. As a matter of fact it's how I started to contribute to Scour.

We've actually offered @nthykier to take over responsibilities in the project a while back considering his great and frequent contributions. Not sure if he'd be interested today? The offer'd still stand from my end.

If other people would be interested that'd obviously appreciated as well.

[Ede123]

P.S. If somebody from the Inkscape project is reading this: Maybe you're interested to refresh the historic bounds between the projects? Maybe @joneuhauser ? ;-)

[nthykier]

Thanks for the offer. Unfortunately, I do not think I can solve the root issue.

Honestely, I do not use scour nor work with svgs any more and I do not envision that to change nor becoming notably more active on scour in the foreseeable future (my last active contribution to scour was ~3 years ago as far as I can tell, just to put my current "activity level" into perspective). In other words, I do not see myself as a good solution to this issue.

[oberstet]

@nthykier thanks for a clear statement! and for your contributions anyways=)

@Ede123 let's see, maybe we find a solution - now that there is some awareness and mutual understanding of the situation.

sadly, this is nothing new and Scour is only one, tiny OSS being hit besides lots of other stuff of course

the freeriders, and of course the users will be unhappy. sooner or later. ignoring reality comes with a price as well. sorry, rant over;)

fwiw, I've recently become aware of an effort called "Post Open Source", and started or involving Bruce Perens.

as I have the links around anyways, let me just dump the whole list:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_open_source vs
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software
• https://hackaday.com/2024/01/10/open-source-needs-a-new-mission-protecting-users/
• https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/08/open_sources_new_mission/
• https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/27/bruce_perens_post_open/
• https://opensource.org/board-member/bruce-perens/
• https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/12/27/2126224/what-comes-after-open-source-bruce-perens-is-working-on-it
• https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/196f8fv/what_comes_after_open_source_bruce_perens_is/
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38783500

[Jamim]

Since Scour is written in Python, you might consider transferring it to the Jazzband organization as an option. But it will require some effort.

Jazzband is a collaborative community to share the responsibility of maintaining Python-based projects.

[oberstet]

first of all, thanks for caring! and thanks for making an effort to propose a way forward!

next: to me, it seems like a scam

You should transfer your project to the Jazzband organization on GitHub ..
https://jazzband.co/about/faq#how-do-i-transfer-a-project-to-jazzband

"sure! and you (the jazzband bots) should go f*** yourself?" ;)

there isn't a valid reason that would require such stuff, and a real, properly decentralized project isn't possible with such an approach.

granted, we are now talking about sth different ... but of high interest to me ... proper decentralization. their fantasy claims triggered me;)

as in: why is one of the Tornado Cash devs still in prison in NL? what could they have done different to make that impossible ... anonymization .. Tor .. OpSec .. not using GH ..

anyways, I will not agree with such a transfer.