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414 points st_goliath | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.466s | source
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mmsc ◴[] No.43971967[source]
It's surprising that upstream was involved in this. Around 5 years ago, I came to the (sad) conclusion that GNU screen development had completely halted. Is that still not the case?

Does screen have the functionality to add a new window to an existing screen without attaching to the screen yet?

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jzb ◴[] No.43972387[source]
Upstream requested that the SUSE team take a look at it. It seems that development is understaffed and the upstream may not have the expertise to maintain it properly. Which, if true, is sad -- I know that tmux and others exist, but a lot of people have used Screen for many many years. It sucks when a tool bitrots.
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marcosdumay ◴[] No.43973007[source]
Looks like a tech-debt ridden large piece of software that new developers just can't understand.

If that's the case, it's not really about it being "understaffed". Instead, it's doomed to rot until it's replaced of rewritten. There's no scenario where more maintainers will help, except for marginally delaying it.

The good news is that there are almost perfect replacements out there, and most of them are leaner.

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1. narag ◴[] No.43975209[source]
Instead, it's doomed to rot until it's replaced of rewritten.

I've seen how that mindset has ruined several companies. Not saying that you're wrong about that particular program that is, after all, free software replaced by other free software parts. But for business, it's lethal.

Joel Spolsky had a nice piece about it:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

That and Fire and Motion seem to be forgotten wisdom already:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/

I feel old :-)