Things that suck about open source

I spend at least 90% of my day immersed in open source software. My web browser is FireFox. My server runs Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. I’ve recently been working in the excellent PHP framework CakePHP. This blog is powered by the amazing open source WordPress. There’s no doubt in my mind that these projects are all best of breed and I wouldn’t be able to do most of what I do without them.

There is, however, another side of open source that drives me crazy. That is the vast number of half-finished abandoned projects that litter the web.

The other day I was looking for a good PHP class for handling user registration/login. It’s obviously something that nearly every website deals with. While there are a number of projects out there I wasn’t able to find one that’s well developed and does what I need. That’s ok. The problem is the large number of partially working solutions that are abandoned. On many open source repositories it’s difficult to impossible to determine the exact state of a project. Most importantly is it still being actively developed.

When picking an open source project - especially one that will be incorporated into a larger project as opposed to one that will be used stand alone - it’s vital to find a project that’s current, actively undergoing development and that has a community of users that will support it.

But here’s the good thing about open source. Most of the time if is project is abandoned it’s possible for someone else to come along and take it over. Or at the very least it should be possible to use an existing project as the basis for a new open source project that you can maintain, actively develop and build a community around.