 I want to talk to you about a really weird kind of fear mongering that I see going on within the Linux community and really within the broader free and open source software community. And this is the fear mongering regarding maintenance mode software or software that's not actively being maintained. Because I get these kinds of questions a lot from viewers of my channel. I often get questions about hey DT should I be running whatever piece of software because it's no longer actively maintained or it hasn't seen a release in however many months or however many years. Should I be running this piece of software? Is it safe? Is it dangerous? What should I do? And the reason people ask this is because a lot of people spread this kind of misinformation especially on Linux forms for an open source software forms about if a project isn't seeing active maintenance if it's not seeing active commits that it's a dead project and therefore you shouldn't use it and that's not necessarily the case. Just because a piece of software hasn't seen a release in a long time doesn't necessarily make it dangerous it doesn't make it unsafe doesn't necessarily mean there's any security vulnerabilities it depends on the type of software for example a web browser there is a lot of people that try to attack you via the web browser I would never run a web browser that wasn't actively maintained. The Linux kernel the Linux kernel has to be actively maintained for security vulnerabilities because hackers are always attacking the kernel. So the minute that the kernel team drops the ball we're all going to be in trouble right so you want your kernel to be actively maintained you want your web browsers to be actively maintained you probably want your email client to be actively maintained but 95% of the software that you run on your computer doesn't necessarily have to be actively maintained most of the software on my computer for example most of the software on your computer is feature complete it does a simple task a lot of these programs they they do one thing they do one thing well it's the UNIX philosophy right a lot of especially your command line programs for example they have one task and if that program already accomplishes what it was set out to do what it was designed to do obviously it's not going to see any further development it's not going to see any further releases because it was designed for one task it already does that it is feature complete at that point so in some cases some of the command line programs that you run on your Linux machine or other UNIX like operating systems like the bsds or the various UNIX flavors and some of those command line programs often haven't had a release in many years does that make them unsafe no it's perfectly fine one of the best examples of a piece of software that is essentially in maintenance mode and it has been in maintenance mode for a couple of decades is the vi editor vi has not had a major release i think and since 2004 2005 it's been a long time since the vi editor at a release you know why it's because it's in maintenance mode vi pretty much already does what the creators envisioned it to do and at some point they just quit adding new features but that's all right because vi was forked back in the 1990s for vim right vi improved is vim and you know if you're really concerned that you know for whatever reason you shouldn't be running vi well you could always run vim or some of the other forks of vi or vim has its own forks like neo vm they see active maintenance and they see all kinds of new features just thousands of new features have been added to those projects that vi for example doesn't have like syntax highlighting and all that so you have these other projects but vi is really designed to be really minimal and simple and vi is actually the default editor on most unix like operating systems think about all the millions of linux servers around the world bsd servers unix servers you know what editor is on almost all of those systems vi right so is vi safe yes vi is perfectly safe if it wasn't safe then all these countless millions of servers around the world wouldn't have vi as their editor there's nothing wrong with a program being essentially in maintenance mode and of course maintenance mode a lot of people like to label these projects as abandoned where right that's another term that gets thrown around they've been abandoned because nobody's really doing anything with it now that that sounds a little more scary right when i say something's in maintenance mode that sounds oh okay that doesn't sound too bad well i said you know vi is abandoned where then people like whoa it's been abandoned something must be wrong with it maybe i shouldn't use it well it's really kind of the same thing it's just one has more of a negative connotation than the other most of you guys are running window managers for example that haven't seen a release in many years how many of you guys have used the open box window manager i love open box it's one of my favorite floating window managers open box has not had a release in many many years you know why it's because open box is considered feature complete like the developers behind open box they reached a point of hey open box is is pretty much done it does everything we envisioned open box to do as a standalone floating window manager so it's not really being actively maintained anymore now again is that okay yeah there's nothing wrong with that open box is still used by millions of linux users around the world many desktop environments use the open box window manager as their default window manager like lx de open box was the default window manager for lx de and it still is lx cute many lx cute distributions actually use open box as the window manager for the lx cute desktop environment so there's nothing wrong with it right just because it's in maintenance mode or some people would consider it possibly abandoned where again doesn't make it unsafe now i also need to mention xorg because xorg's one that really gets thrown around a lot on linux forms for an open source software forms here in the last year or two especially it's really ramped up to where people on these forms are actively telling people quit using xorg xorg's broken stop using xorg moved to wailin already wailin is the future and they're right wailin is the future and the reason this is really ramped up in the last year or two is because really in the last couple of years kde plasma and genome have really gotten there as far as wailin where if you're running genome or kde plasma you can essentially live in wailin for the most part depending on some of your hardware choices wailin could still be an issue for you but for most of the users out there if you want to run genome or kde plasma and live in wailin it's pretty much ready right now is um it still has some work but you can do it and because of that a lot of these people they're using wailin especially on genome and kde plasma trying to tell people quit using xorg xorg it's deprecated it's broken it's just in maintenance mode it's not being actively maintained and that's kind of correct they're not adding new features to xorg anymore the folks that maintain xorg they're not trying to do new stuff with xorg because they already know wailin is the future they would be wasting their time at this point to work on xorg as far as adding new features because they see xorg eventually will die and people pretty much all of us will be on wailin at some point but just because wailin is the future does that mean xorg is broken like right now does xorg work on your system it works on my system most of you guys are probably running xorg you're running a either a desktop environment or a window manager that's a x11 desktop environment slash window manager is your machine broken probably not it's probably working just fine so again don't let these people shame you into running a piece of software that's actually working for you you have to keep in mind that a lot of these people on the internet that are trying to tell you what pieces of software to not use what pieces of software you should use a lot of these people are damaged broken people a lot of these people they actually identify with the software that they run and they need to validate their choices as far as software and how do they validate their choice in software well they try to make you also run that same piece of software because if they can get more people to use that particular software then it kind of validates their choice right it makes them feel better like they made the right decision and if you're one of these people that do that that go on the internet try to tell people what to use what not to use please stop doing that and if you're one of the people that spread some of the fear mongering as far as certain pieces of software they their release cadence isn't quite as fast as you would like it maybe they haven't had a release in a few months few years whatever it happens to be don't tell people that they shouldn't use that program don't don't tell people that it's dangerous to use that program unless it's actually dangerous to use that program if there's some kind of glaring security holes tell people about that right don't tell people to quit using a piece of software because it hasn't seen a release in the last year tell people to quit using a piece of software if it has a real security issue and let them know what that security issue is that's what you should be doing ran over guys peace