• frongt@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    Nova launcher has been dead since it was sold to an ad company three years ago.

    • DefederateLemmyMl@feddit.nl
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      24 hours ago

      It’s been dead since they didn’t release it under a FOSS license.

      That’s really the only way a piece of software is guaranteed to survive.

      • smeg@feddit.uk
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        12 hours ago

        It’s still not a guarantee. I quite liked neo/omega launcher but there are breaking bugs introduced in the last update over two years ago. Nobody seems interested in fixing them so I moved on.

        (Of course anyone has the option of fixing them, and I understand that that’s your point!)

        • DefederateLemmyMl@feddit.nl
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          7 hours ago

          Yes, I get your point and I paused for a second if I should really use the word guarantee, because sometimes development just stops on software, regardless of license.

          The thing is, if development stops on proprietary software, the project is truly dead. With FOSS it can always be revived by someone with enough interest in the software because the codebase is freely available. So instead of being dead, it’s merely “in hibernation”.

          A good example is the Amarok mp3 player that I used in KDE 15 years ago. It stopped being maintained around 2011 and fell in disuse until last year some people picked up the code, cleaned it up and ported it to Qt5, and now it’s being actively maintained again.

          • smeg@feddit.uk
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            7 hours ago

            I imagine it doesn’t happen that often, but that’s a really nice success story