x11-wm/olvwm

[Robert Simmons]

On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 4:00 PM, Chris Rees <utisoft at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 24 May 2011 18:09, C. P. Ghost <cpghost at cordula.ws> wrote:
>> On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 3:53 PM,  <fredb at getnet.com> wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I have updated ports and when reinstalling I found x11-wm/olvwm which I was
>>> using was gone from the ports tree.  Why?
>>
>> I noticed that too, and was bit by that change as well.
>> Since I love the olvwm look and feel, I'm sad to see
>> it go from the FreeBSD ports collection.
>>
>> % grep olvwm /usr/ports/MOVED
>> x11-wm/olvwm||2011-05-01|Has expired: Upstream disapear and distfile
>> is no more available
>>
>> I think we could resurrect this port, using the last available
>> distfile, which fortunately is still with us:
>>
>> ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/olvwm4.tar.Z
>>
>> There are also two patches there:
>>
>> ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/olvwm4.Patch01.Z
>> ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/olvwm4.Patch02.Z
>>
>> Unfortunately, I don't know where the old port files have
>> gone. We *REALLY* should consider moving dead ports to
>> a separate subdirectory hierarchy (such as /usr/ports/.deadports
>> or some such), so people interested in resurrecting old ports
>> could have a look. Just letting then disappear silently is rude
>> und unnecessary, but that's just IMHO.
>
> I don't understand your comment on silence -- they've been deprecated
> for a while now.
>
> I'll take a look at resurrecting and hosting it tomorrow, if people
> are interested.

I grabbed the source and took a look at it.  At the end of the README
there is the following line: "Bugs may be reported to Scott Oaks
(scott.oaks at East.Sun.COM), who will try to fix bugs whenever he can."
Looks to be the old maintainer from the Sun days.  The tarball that I
grabbed doesn't have the LEGAL_NOTICE file, so it's not clear to me
which Sun license it is under.

It seems that the port depends on the olgx library which also seems to
be deprecated.

On xwinman.org, this wm's development activity is listed as "LOW".

So, all of this leads me to point out the following: FOSS is a
volunteer thing.  If a maintainer evaporates and the port gets old, it
is taken out of the ports tree.  It's not gone, you can still get
everything if you pull the old ports tree from a specific data as was
mentioned in another reply.  But, if someone writes FOSS, they don't
_have_ to maintain it.  If you really like it, and it has been
abandoned, by all means, pick it up, dust it off, and start updating
the code.

As a user of FOSS, you are not entitled to updates from the
maintainers.  You are, however, a beneficiary of the maintainer's
volunteering their time and effort to provide you with updates.

That aside.  If you don't have time to maintain it, then look for an
alternative.  I would suggest looking at xwinman.org and see if there
is another wm that has a "High" development activity that has a
similar look and feel to the one that you want.