Asklemmy

43792 readers

879 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Why don’t application developers who have abandoned their development make the code they don’t need open source? (lemmy.today)

submitted 1 year ago by Slow@lemmy.today to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

22 comments fedilink hide all child comments

There are many closed source applications that have been removed from the Google Play catalog for various reasons.

Often this reason is the cessation of further development and maintenance of the application.

Why don't these people make the code open to everyone if they don't need it anymore?

This could bring great benefits to all people, but everything that was once created simply disappears.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] KISSmyOS@lemmy.world 99 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Why do people not give away that neglected guitar/motorcycle/boat that's been sitting unused for free?

Because one day they'll get to fixing it up surely, and besides they've sunk so much time and money into it that it must still be worth a lot.

[–] drcouzelis@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 year ago

I understand your point XD but want to emphasize, software is NOT like tangible items, and any analogy to them will fall flat.

Giving out the source code to an abandoned application does not mean the original owner doesn't still have their copy.

By just dumping the code online, the software has the potential to be worked on by other people. This can benefit everyone, including the original developer.

Even so, there's plenty of valid reasons to not do it. Licensing issues (did anyone else work on any part of the project using a different license?), pride (no longer being the "owner"), getting it online (choosing a license, getting it online, it all takes at least some time and effort), or just plain "I don't want to" are all valid reasons.