Deploying software that’s no longer maintained afresh

[connordoner]

There’s a tool that I’ve used at other companies that I absolutely love. It has features that few other products have and I’m a lot more productive with it than with those other products.

Wile there are efforts by open-source contributors, it’s no longer maintained by its original developers and hasn’t been for approximately two years.

I’m thinking of using it at my startup, but I worry that it’ll end up with me focusing more on managing the risk that comes with legacy software more than on my core product.

Does anybody please have advice either way?

[MilnerRoute]

Maybe you could find the closest-related community, and contact them about possibly adopting (or forking) the software you want to see maintained.

[connordoner]

Come to think of it, I think there is a community fork. It’s also used by the Wikimedia Foundation, so I might look at whether they are/could push changes to their own fork upstream.