OSDev.org

Hi,

a quick glance at OS projects list showed that there are lot of dead projects.
A lot of them can be flagged, but at the end is there any site admin to remove them ?

It's a wiki. You can edit it. This site has lived for a long time, you could flag it with some "Doesn't seem to exist at date 2013-06-14, remove entry at date 2014-06-14 if it doesn't seem alive before them" and someone will eventually remove dead entries. This gives the projects a while to come back to live.

I think it is a priority to remove these projects whose web page is a 404 and there is no contact information, nor releases since a reasonably long time. But isn't there some way to automate that ?

Just add a timestamp "This project was dead at date 2013-07-03, remove the entry at 2014-07-03." and whenever this thread pops up next year I can tell people to do exactly that.

I went throught few characters on project page and I...

1. 1. commented out projects which doesn't have any url
   2. marked OS projects without working web (and no information on google)
   3. marked OS projects unmaintained for longer time

Should I contact owners of unmaintained projects?

BTW Not developed projects still have some source codes that can be used for educational puposes. There can be one repository created for their sourcecodes.

It's perfectly fine that the Project list isn't fully comprehensive and complete. If an entry gets deleted but the project truly deserves to be on the list, it'll be added soon enough back on the list. For that reason, it's okay to be bold and just remove stuff that's unsubstancial. A project doesn't exist by default, the burden of proof (setting up a website, etc.) falls on the maintainers - if they failed to do that, it's better to assume it doesn't really exist.

That said - it's probably bad to comment out entries. Their disputed status will be hidden and if somebody decides to volunteer reviewing the list, they'll likely miss these entries unless they view the source. Just be bold and remove the entries if the website doesn't work/exist and nothing is revealed by an online search.

Don't forget to respect people's right to have their project unlisted - don't add projects without the permission of the project leaders.

While we're on the subject, I have made some tweaks to the OSProjectEntry template (technically, made a new template for the tweaks). The new template focuses more on textual description, adds the option for a screenshot, and includes some style changes. Screenshots may not be appropriate for all projects, but for ones focused on visuals they convey a lot more than a text description can.

You can see a demo here, or in the screenshot below.

HugeCode wrote:3. marked OS projects unmaintained for longer time

Please be carefull when doing that. While I'm not taking this personally, I don't like seeing my project marked as "Not being developed since 2009" just because the last file upload was done in that year. A quick look at the git repository would've shown that the last commit was done in march this year.

sortie: OK.
klange: It looks good.
darkinsanity: sorry, but when checking many different projects on different webs it isn't easy to check everything, every information. Would you be able to help me with that task?

I have synched my page with changes from the last day and merged it into the main page. If there are objections to this change, this would be the place to voice them.

Klange: It's probably a good idea to delete your draft User:Klange/ pages to clean up the edit history and to keep the wiki clear of too many obsolete versions of articles.

Does anyone know if Plan 42 is still alive?

The author probably knows. Why not ask him?

Good idea.

I just noticed it wasn't on the project list, and was thinking of adding it, but if it's dead then never mind!

mfnickster wrote:Does anyone know if Plan 42 is still alive?

On the very page you linked to it says this:-

*** STATUS - 21st Nov 2013 ***
I'd summarise the status as "going very slowly but not
abandoned".