[Wikitech-l] Upstream shutdowns

On 5/29/21 5:59 PM, Brian Wolff wrote: On the general topic, it's worrying to me this is the third major platform/software that Wikimedia relies on that is gone, with little notice. OTRS went EOL 2 days before Christmas last year[1] and Freenode well, switched hands and imploded. In all 3 cases though it's been pretty clear beforehand that something was wrong or unsustainable. OTRS didn't release their community edition on time[2], Freenode has had questionable governance for a while now, the "Freenode Limited" company was created in 2017, and Phabricator/Phacility has been maintained by a single person (who's done great work, no doubt) in a way that did not really encourage upstream contributions to build a sustainable community of contributors (my impression, correct me if I'm wrong). And with COVID-19, plenty of IRL businesses/shops/etc. have gone under or just closed down so it's unsurprising that we're seeing the effect in tech/FOSS too. I think it would be a good idea if we can check in on our upstreams[2], have sustainable governance, identifying if they assistance/support, and then figuring out how to provide what's needed. To start with, I think we have a unique opportunity to influence the governance of Libera Chat given they're just starting off and appear to be interested in getting our feedback[3]. [1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T275294 [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Upstream_projects [3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Libera_Chat_governance -- Legoktm