Organize | Zheng Liyuan
Listing | CSDN（ID：CSDNnews）
Recently, open source DevOps service provider Sonatype released a new "State of the Software Supply Chain" report, which mentioned a worrying fact: "Nearly one in five projects stopped maintenance last year, which affects both the Java and JavaScript ecosystems." ”
The reason behind the suspension of more and more open source projects is the almost unsolvable problem in the open source developer circle: between insisting on open source and maintaining a livelihood, how should project maintainers have both?
Countless open-source project maintainers are trapped in the pressure of survival, working full-time while "generating electricity with love" in their spare time out of love and responsibility. But once they lose their jobs, will the open source projects they struggle to maintain last?
Today, the answer seems to be "difficult" - after being laid off and unemployed at the "embarrassing age" of 36 and switching to selling steel, the author of the open source .NET project NanUI issued a stop announcement on National Day: "Unfortunately, NanUI will suspend development, and I can only apologize for making this difficult decision." ”
The project has not yet changed its name, and it ushered in a "stop"
From the project introduction, NanUI is an open-source framework on the .NET platform for .NET / .NET Core developers who want to use front-end technologies such as HTML5/CSS3 to build Windows Forms application user interfaces.
(NanUI Project Address: https://github.com/XuanchenLin/NanUI)
NanUI is based on the Xilium.CefGlue project, and its rendering engine is based on the embeddable Chromium Embedded Framework, so "users can design and develop user interfaces for .NET desktop applications using a variety of front-end technologies (HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript) and frameworks (React/Vue/Angular/Blazor). In addition, NanUI's unique JavaScript Bridge makes it easy and concise to implement communication and data exchange between the browser and .NET.
Based on the above characteristics, NanUI author Lin Xuanchen confidently said: "Using the NanUI interface framework will bring endless possibilities for the user interface design and development of traditional WinForm applications!" ”
From its birth to now, NanUI has passed 9 years, although it is still a beta version, but it has become stable in terms of function and API syntax, so Lin Xuanchen revealed in the project introduction: "After 9 years of iteration, it's time to release the official version for NanUI!" When NanUI v1.0 is released, the project's new name - WinFormium will be officially enabled. ”
However, we have not yet waited for the official release of NanUI v1.0, and the new name WinFormium has not yet been officially launched, and the project has ushered in a "stop".
No one could take over, and there wasn't enough donation
When announcing the NanUI "stop" notice, Lin Xuanchen mentioned his unemployment:
It is very unfortunate that my company also completely announced the reduction of all development positions at the beginning of last year (2022) due to the epidemic, so I can only adapt to the flow of unemployment at the embarrassing age of 36, and I could rely on leisure fishing time to develop and maintain NanUI when I was at work, but this unemployment, this opportunity was completely lost.
After losing his job, he decided to sell steel for a living across industries. From that moment on, for Lin Xuanchen, writing code changed from a career to a hobby: "After all, I have to live and eat, and I can only solve the problem of food and clothing first." ”
Some people may wonder: NanUI has been born for 9 years, has no one donated to the NanUI project? Yes, of course, but those incomes are simply not enough to feed themselves.
According to Lin Xuanchen, NanUI, which is open source based on the MIT protocol, now has a certain user base in the industry, including many well-known enterprises such as China Unicom, Piovan Jinfu, City Express Hotel, Shentong and so on. But NanUI has always adopted an open source and free policy, occasionally donating only 5 pieces and 10 pieces, even if it relies on the CEF compilation library that supports H264 coding to "force donation", it only has a maximum of one or two thousand income per year.
As Lin Xuanchen said, "This is far from enough for the maintenance and development of a project."
Some people may ask: can you hand over NanUI to other project maintainers, there is no need to stop changing, right? It stands to reason that it can be done if there are others working on the project.
It can be seen from the Star number (3k) and PR number (5) of NanUI that although there are many well-known enterprises among its users in the past 9 years, it is still a relatively niche open source project on the whole: the community ecology has not been established, and almost no PR has been received, so NanUI is still developed by Lin Xuanchen alone, and there is no other successor.
In order to survive, I had no choice but to stop
On the one hand, there is an open source project that no one has taken over and cannot maintain food and clothing, and on the other hand, the steel sales work that starts from scratch and depends on it for survival, this choice is both difficult and helpless for Lin Xuanchen:
"In order to survive, I can only spend more time and energy to negotiate orders, to sell, to collect payments, so it is difficult to free up time to develop and maintain the NanUI project, which I am deeply helpless, and I hope that I can free up time to continue to maintain NanUI after my life and work are stable."
At the end of the suspension notice, Lin Xuanchen also explained some follow-up arrangements for NanUI:
- The latest version of NanUI has been developed. I intended to release this version as the official version of NanUI 1.0, but I really didn't have the time and energy to write documentation and make sample programs, so I had to postpone it, and developers could continue to use the current version 0.9.109 of NanUI.
- The current version 0.9.109 of NanUI is functionally stable, without fatal bugs, and can be used to develop software for various production environments.
- If you encounter a problem, "you can go to the QQ group to consult the big guys who have developed mature products, or you can chat me privately to leave a message, and try to reply when I have time."
Graduated as a coder at 36? "Can't figure it out"
It is a little gratifying that Lin Xuanchen's suspension notice has attracted the attention of many developers, and after understanding the cause and effect of the incident, they have donated and blessed him, for which Lin Xuanchen went online again to express his gratitude:
In addition to gratitude, Lin Xuanchen also made further plans for the development of the NanUI project in the future: it may follow some domestic open source projects, that is, the basic version will continue to use MIT open source for free, and the advanced version will charge a certain fee to supplement the home use - for the content of the advanced version, he specifically added: "The advanced version only provides additional tools to facilitate development, and does not reduce the current functions and features of the open source version." ”
And for the matter of graduating from the identity of "code farmer" at the age of 36, Lin Xuanchen also felt helpless: "I started playing BASIC at the age of 10, to later Turbo C, Pascal, and started playing C# after studying computer science in college until now, I feel that it has not been a few years since I came out of school, did I graduate at the age of 36?" I can't figure it out how I think about it, it's really helpless~"
These experiences and voices shared by Lin Xuanchen have unsurprisingly resonated with many developers:
- "36 C# programmers, I feel that the current job is also the last job to write code, if you turn, if you still write code, it is estimated that you can only get on the computer, older programmers are better in second- and third-tier cities, not as helpless as first-tier cities, I don't want to write code when I'm older, and I don't know what to do."
- "Is it so hard for middle-aged people to have a career as a programmer... Alas, I wonder if I want to find a way out in advance. “
- "As a former .NET and C# faithful coder, it was really emotional to see this article."
Reference Links:
https://blog.sonatype.com/introducing-our-9th-annual-state-of-the-software-supply-chain-report
https://github.com/XuanchenLin/NanUI/discussions/367