Bored and Exhausted

Not gonna lie, I've done so much stuff with Gemini: a search engine, Q&A site, a music library service and radio, youtube and twitch proxies, misfin geminimail, AuraRepo, a 25% finished MMO game, a Sefaria proxy, a whole server suite, my own GUI browser, but, y'all, I am so freaking bored and exhausted at the same time.

None of what I've made is exciting anymore.

I had plans on finishing Biomebound, finishing up my server suite software (SIS), and then moving on to a Wiki system, song albums and lyrics, and tv & movie database/tracker. But I just don't have the energy nor excitement to do any of that.

Jul 01 · 6 months ago · 👍 aRubes, LucasMW, zordsdavini, curry

🔒 Locked

56 Comments ↓

It's okay to take a (long) break! It's even necessary once in a while. Everything will still be there when you get the urge to pick things back up.

Thanks for all the effort. I'd also echo what @repeater said.

Know the feeling, two approaches I have found useful

• 1. set yourself small achievable goals and tick them off, nothing better than clearing off a list. Helps to try and work on one project outcome at a time.
• 2. embrace community, working with others, while sometimes taxing can be very rewarding and help push 1.

But in general, as already stated, you are working on lots of cool stuff. Perhaps ask yourself why you started each project and how it fits in with your overall goals and cut anything that doesn’t fit in with your goals

@sbr Thanks. It seems some of the projects I want to work on for Gemini are things that others don't necessarily want to develop themselves, so I am unsure that there would be people to help out with any of my projects.

The original goals of all of my projects are to bring things into Gemini that I find sorely lacking, things that I and others tend to go to the web to get information on, even though Gemini would be a good place for that information.

For example, why the heck has nobody made a Goodreads for Gemini yet? I don't know, but I would like it. The same can be said for song lyrics and tv and movie trackers.

And yet, it's going to involve so much work for me to develop those. But if I don't do it myself, then who will? It's been like 5 years and a Goodreads hasn't been made yet. And the wiki system we used to have (transjovian) doesn't seem to allow edits anymore.

I cannot be satisfied with Gemini when I know there's so much more pretty basic things we could be doing with Gemini, and things that fit in with Gemini as a text-focused protocol/environment, too. So that's where the goals of all the projects are coming from (aside from the MMO, which is about bringing more user-to-user interaction and fun to Gemini).

But it's also exhausting to develop all of these many projects. It's like I'm never finished with anything because there's always something else that I need to tweak or finish or start, and if I don't, then nobody else will do it.

Idk, I do feel like the development of new and interesting Gemini capsules has become stagnant, and so I don't feel like there's much of a community of Gemini developers.

And of the older capsules that were developed, many of them didn't get as much attention as they should have. For example, over at thegonz.net there is a whole multiplayer gaming platform, called sggs, that I feel like barely anybody used!

The CDG is an excellent resource, and I don't see it mentioned often. Gemipedia is also great, yet some would still link to Wikipedia. There's a reason I placed CDG and Gemipedia as special results in my search engine, and it's because these projects need more use!

DSN Antenna exists for non-technology gemlogs, and yet it barely ever has anything on it.

I made a whole music library service, AuraGem Music, which was basically like what Google Play Music was where it let you upload your own music into your private music library and play them, and like 4 people did some stuff and stopped using it in a couple days.

I made a whole new misfin spec with 5 other people, and a server to go with it, with newsletters, and it's used by like 4-5 people max. There's two misfin geminimail clients, no proper misfin GUIs except lagrange's simple misfin thing that I bet nobody uses anymore.

Even transjovian was made by a developer, and the wiki system got some users for a while, and then it seemed to have completely dropped off.

So like, I don't blame there not being a Gemini development community. Aside from Kennedy, spellbinding, BBS, Station, Antenna, and astrobotany, none of the other stuff gets used like at all by anybody. And developers don't support each other here.

I used to be in the ZeroNet community, and we would all constantly support and promote each other's websites. In Geminispace, it's not the same. You might get a few mentions, but it's all just stagnant and empty. The ZeroNet community was significantly more active than Gemini has ever been, and ZeroNet was never that well known. I made real internet friends with several people over on ZeroNet, that I talked to *daily* and we would collaborate on development projects for ZeroNet, but here in Geminispace that doesn't happen.

Geminispace just feels sad and empty to me now. There's like no community here at all, just people talking at each other a little here and there as they pass by each other.

Yeah it honestly just seems like you've burnt out more than anything. If you allow me to be a bit blunt, none of the projects you've made sound like something I'd want to use. It's not a jab or anything either, I just don't need a music library, a search engine, proxies to the big web, that's why I didn't use them or contribute. If you want to use those, make them and use them, but don't blame others for not using something they don't need. Honestly I agree with @repeater , you should probably take a break. Judging by your other posts it seems to me (could be wrong) that you have a tendency to take things a bit too seriously and it's been taking a toll on you.

@undefined Never blamed anybody for not using things they don't need. But nobody wants to be in a "community" that feels like it's doing nothing. And definitely, nobody wants to be in a community where they feel like they can only do the things they want if they have to do everything themselves. And yet you tell me I should just be fine with having to do every single thing myself with almost zero community supports or interaction, and that I shouldn't feel despirited by that? Nah, this is a pretty natural response.

There is clearly a reason gemini development has been extremely stagnant, why some of the search engines are out of date, and some of them have gone fully offline, why DSN Antenna never gets used, why people don't play on sggs, why the wiki stoped supporting edits. None of these are my projects, fyi.

A part of this community wants Gemini to just be a social network of boring technology small talk posts, and the other part was or is currently being ran off. Multiple people who were here have left, even the interim leader of the spec had to quit (or whatever happened there).

The spec hasn't been completed, there's no registered standardization of the spec nor the mimetype. None of the major developers of the capsules, including Antenna, Kennedy, thegonz, astrobotany, etc., have a very active role in communicating with the rest of the community via gemlogs or on the BBS. Personally, it seems like Gemini is the *least* active it has ever been in the past 5 years.

I'm not the only person who has expressed this. There was a post just the other week about this. The community here is a little lifeless.

hah, I had the exact same thought with good reads alt, seems like the perfect app for a reading first community.

I don’t personally see the absence of such a thing a failure of the community, more a reflection of its size, capability and time in the day. There are likely small hundreds of people who actively use gemini (although the number may be far lower, maybe under 50 truly active people), of those a % is capable of creating new projects.

Fundamentally discovery is hard. I’ve been actively discovering the small web over the past few months and still learning stuff. I only discovered your search engine last week and I love it and started thinking of ideas for extending it

Maybe we should spin up a projects subspace (didn’t look if there is one) to list ongoing projects and discuss who’s looking for help etc. Though I do see this happening already on this BBS.

As an aside, this is a problem in all FOSS projects, though in other spaces there is a potential pool of thousands of contributors rather than 10s.

All that said, I would love to contribute, will spend some time today spinning up SIS and providing more feedback.

@sbr Imo, you have to remember that the majority of the people who use Gemini are techy people, and so this community is more likely to be capable of development than most other communities. Gemini is not exactly easy to get into without tech knowledge.

But also, *a lot* of people have left, and *a lot* of developers we have are significantly less active than they used to be. And it's been like this for like 2 years now, at least.

@sbr For example, benk used to release podcasts right here on Gemini! And then they just stopped. There was another podcast as well, and they stopped. Drew Devault left. The person who did Konpeito, where are they? Not here. Where's Acidus, the developer of Kennedy and Gemipedia?

Like, when I say this is the least active Gemini has ever been, it *really* feels like that. A lot of people left, some were ran off, a lot of people have become significantly less active, and I could only imagine the amount of people who were exploring Gemini for the first time and then left because there's not much here.

Back in like 2022 or so we were getting new capsules like sggs, Kennedy, Gemipedia, etc. all started up. People were actually developing things. Now? Not much is going on, except yet another gemini client here and there.

@undefined You also don't have to use or desire somebody else's project to support it, but only true communities understand this. I don't really care for most of the games on sggs, that doesn't mean I'm not going to support and constantly talk about how excellent that capsule is!

I suspect that covid meant people were starved for novelty and a lot of energy went to things that were new. Though that happens in all things. Probably 5% of the people who were mad about sourdough in 22’ are still making bread today.

People love getting into stuff, and when the novelty is no longer there only those with a true interest or reason for doing something will stick around.

@sbr Nah, some of these people have been here since the gopher days, and some of them have been here since Gemini was started back in 2019, before Covid. Gemini reached a peak on gemini itself probably around 2022 I would say. And since then it's been a steady decline, imo.

Interesting how 2022 is when covid lockdown ended

@meidam Yeah, that's true. But some of the most active *developers* throughout the lifespan of Gemini have been here since before covid, I think, right? Maybe I'm completely wrong, idk.

Edit: Also, to be fair, many places lifted lockdowns before 2022. 42 states lifted lockdowns in the US in 2021.

That youtube proxy is actually pretty cool now that I look at it btw.

Personally, I have never seen Gemini as something to replace my usage of http. For me it's a place to read some interesting things that I don't find anywhere else.

Also, I don't have that same drive that some people have to develop a bunch of stuff in my free time. Only occasionally try to make something for fun sometimes. A goodreads like service on gemini sure would be cool, but definitely sounds like it would be a big project.

It might sound half hearted, but I still enjoy gemini as it is now. And I'm thankful to the people who have put in the work and still support services that exist on gemini today.

Hmmmm, could be an interesting project to try out. A goodreads service for gemini. Maybe I'll look into it. No promises though.

And yeah, I know that that specific project wasn't the point of this whole post. But still...

@meidam Thanks! The YT proxy has been there since like 2020, iirc, but it's gone through a lot of problems, lol. I just recently had to switch to yt-dlp because the youtube downloading library no longer worked.

Anyways, I personally always saw gemini as much much more than a place to read gemlog posts. That's why I never did the whole gemlog thing outside of mostly project updates, because I just wasn't interested in that. It's not why I like Gemini.

I like Gemini because it's ad-free, tracker-free, script-free, *and* it's so much easier to develop things for! But best of all, it doesn't slow down my computer or use GBs of memory to browse.

And these qualities make it great for some really basic things. The BBS is a great application. Astrobotany and sggs too. Repository services, like gemini://source.community, work so well in this format.

I HATE going to the YT website, because it's so dang slow. The twitch website annoys me just as well. But what if I just had a simple text interface so I don't have to open my webbrowser just to watch a video from one of the people that I like to watch? The same goes for Twitch vods. That to me is what Gemini should be all about.

And it's not all that different from what Gopher was intended to be: a bunch of menus to different files - be that videos, audio, pdfs, etc.

Gemini doesn't replace *all* of the web, but it could replace a lot of the most common things that people might need. And it saves both data and memory usage, and is particularly useful for people who might not have the internet speeds to use the modern web.

That to me is where Gemini's potential has always been. Like, gemlogs are cool and all, but it's not aspirational, it's not changing technology for the better, it's not improving people's experience with existing technology, it's not driving a community of collaboration towards Gemini's core goals, when you limit Gemini to something far below its own potential.

@clseibold I definitely also like that gemini is ad-free, tracker-free and easier to develop for. Not that I've developed anything for it myself yet.

Your speech there (if I may call it that) about gemini's potential is actually kinda inspiring.

But there is no shame in taking a break when you are in this state of feeling like nothing makes sense anymore and all that. I have had the thought before that you seem to be doing a LOT of projects at the same time and stuff. Very understandable that it is becoming too much.

I've always been impressed by the amount of work you do for Gemini. But if you need a break, you need a break. This should be a hobby that is enjoyable. And be proud of what you have already accomplished. It's a lot more than my farkle high score.

@meidam Yeah, I'm just tired and cranky I guess. Idk.

I would like to import the entire musicbrainz database and work on a gemini frontend for it. But that's *so* much freaking work, and that's kinda where I'm at right now - there's so much to do, and the stuff requires so much time and debugging frustration, especially when you can't properly debug SQL queries.

I spent about 90% of my time developing AuraGem Ask's overhaul on just fixing and trying to figure out what's wrong with the SQL queries. And many times without proper error messages.

Backend development literally sucks so much. I don't know how people in the web-sphere do this.

@darkghost Thanks. I will probably have to take a break. I always get anxious during breaks though because I always worry about there being existing bugs in my code that people are probably sending reports in, and I'm just not there to instantly fix them with urgency like I usually do.

But then again, I *always* feel like I'm never fast enogh at fixing bugs.

People often judge software on first impressions, I feel, and so the worst thing that could possibly happen is someone tries out my software for the first time, finds a bug, and then decides to never use it ever again.

I like back end dev and writting sql queries. Doing css, ugh. I have a side project building an elixir app with phoenix (sadly needs to be big web due to user base) and I have invested so much time in geminispace just so I don't need to look at css.

@sbr I think it's really more about golangs poor sql handling, imo. I have to create my own structs, and if I'm like joining two tables together, then I have to make sure the struct has the extra fields that would only be *sometimes* used in some sql queries, and you have to match up all of the things you're selecting to their proper struct fields manually for *every* single query you're using. And if you don't, then you get a runtime error that you only find out about after the fact.

And if you don't actually print out the sql error using `error.Error()`, if instead you just do a panic on the error, it never prints out the sql error that you're receiving.

There's also no sql linting (is that even a thing? I assume so) when you put sql queries in strings, either.

There was also a time where golang didn't even have nullable types for sql queries, and so a null integer field in the database had to be put into an *interface* first, and only then could you check whether it's null. Now golang has nullable sql types though, so it's better, but still.

It's just so bad. I should find a golang library that helps improve all of this, because I'm sure there is one.

The top result on duck duck go for a golang ORM is called GORM xD

@meidam I've heard of that one, I just have to learn it.

I should have been using an ORM all along, I just haven't had the time to learn one of the golang one's.

@meidam Woah! GORM literally has a way to auto-migrate a struct into your database!!! Holy crap, this would have saved so much freaking time!

And there's a proper SQL builder!

@clseibold Might be worth a try then, hehe

@meidam Yeah, I'll be using it for whatever my next project might be. I'm not switching my existing projects to it though, because I don't want to spend yet more hours of my time refactoring a bunch of already-working stuff like I just did with both the search engine and AuraGem Ask, lol.

@clseibold Heh, that makes sense.

I agree with the assessment that Gemini's growth has stagnated in the last few years. Regarding the motivation to develop things for Gemini, I had too many thoughts about it to put in one comment, so I posted it as a log.

@jsreed5 I'm getting this message on amfora, when trying to go to your capsule:

"Failed to connect to the server: hostname does not verify: x509: certificate is not valid for any names, but wanted to match jsreed5.org"

I'm able to choose to trust the capsule anyways on Lagrange and then see it, but would be nice to also be able to veiw it on amfora, since that's the client that I use most of the time.

@jsreed5 Good post!

My only comment would be that every single thing I make for gemini is always made because I desire it in gemini, or because I want to use it. But it's *also* made for other people, because these gemini projects are part of my life's work.

But while a weather service can be used by one person alone, a service like AuraGem Ask cannot be. It has to have more than one user.

And even things that I want to use or desire can still be very frustrating to actually develop, especially when you have 10 different things that you desire to use in gemini, and thus have to now develop 10 different capsules yourself.

But I also just miss the excitement of seeing people share their projects and all of us trying each other's projects out. There is something much more communal about that which I just do not get in gemini much, if at all.

Personally, I think the reason I've done so much with Gemini is not just because I work on things that I might want, but *also* because I work on them with the intention that they will also help other people. If I only cared about the capsules for myself, I would not put so much pressure on myself to get these capsules released, or even fix usability issues. It might be more healthy for me, but it's not more healthy for Gemini itself.

@jsreed5 Thank you for your log, it was a good read.

@clseibold I am a fan of sqlc, get strong types and the flexibility to write your own queries

And go-migrate, for migrations

@meidam It looks like I made my capsule certificate incorrectly, and that's causing the Amfora issue. I put two DNS entries (jsreed5.org and gemini.jsreed5.org) as CNs in the cert; what I shold have done instead, it appears, is put jsreed5.org as the CN and put both DNS entires as SANs. (If that's incorrect, someone please let me know!) Unfortunately, fixing it requires deploying a new cert to the server, which will require some coordination and an announcement ahead of time.

Not a career counsellor, but I remember reading about a particular personality type that combined both "tech" and "social" aspects. You don't sound like you get as much reward out of gizmos as some others, despite being advanced technically.

If I recall correctly, this somewhat rare personality type is rewarded by a field where you personally help people... with tech!

@jsreed5 You can generate a new cert with the existing key and browsers should be fine with it. I tested with Lagrange and amfora.

I just wrote up how I did this as I have a similar multiple domain on single cert setup

Excellent posts guy, I really enjoyed reading your complaints.

For me the problem with Gemini is it's fundamentally a subset of http, so while I love Lagrange and the lack of JS and ads, it doesn't add anything to the web. Also I use edbrowse which solves all those problems with http.

The other problem is the political "vibe" of people here is basically conservative tech liberal, which, while nice and civilized is not giving the spark that I am looking for in a community. People might not think this matters but to me it's critical. In other words, "a social network of boring technology small talk posts" is not it.

I'm interested to hear your interest in Goodreads. I am also interested in that kind of thing and I've been working on a weird semi-goodreads webapp type thing for a while (http though) which I'm eventually going to finish. It's based on GPG though (LOL) not Gemini.

That brings me to my last point, which is I am actually focused on another tech (not Gemini) that is a lot more different and unique - so very much NOT an http subset. Maybe a substitute. That's where my attention is and why I am not that interested in building on Gemini. However they could be combined which might be cool.

I'm just graffitiing my thoughts here on your thread because I think people don't post enough thoughtful, critical stuff on the web OR gemini since the 2010s. It's a big problem. Keep it up.

Regarding SQL I write it by hand and use chatgpt for debugging. I do not use ORM. I'm also not a developer IRL though.

I might add that the way we use things like the web has changed dramatically. We are bombarded with tricks to drive "engagement" or keep us on a platform. Gemini doesn't do this and it is designed specifically not to. Newbies get "bored" because there are no hooks trying to keep you on and consuming content for most of your day. It is like the old web of the late 90s and early 00s. There wasn't much excuse to spend hours and hours every day on the web. It was the dialup model, transactional. Gemini feels this way. IRC kept me engaged for hours. And plenty of coding did as well. The web? I would read the news, maybe a bit of research, done. 20 minutes tops every day.

I've had a few thoughts for games and simple services, but likewise, feel tired and bored thinking about actually doing it. Will it bring me or others joy? Somehow, it does not seem like it. Should these things exist? I don't know if it's worth it or if it just adds noise and entropic heat to the system for no reason.

In the beginning it seemed like a good idea to have this and that in Gemini. Now I am kind of happy _not_ to have it...

My use of Gemini is minimal -- a few games, reading a few posts from Antenna, and checking in here on BBS. That's good enough for me, and yes, I am pretty boring these days.

For me the problem with Gemini is it's fundamentally a subset of http

@Proton I had seen this mentioned by someone else as well (who wrote that a replacement for WWW should not be a subset and should not be compatible), although I cannot find the article now. However, Gopher (especially Gopher+), Scorpion, and Scroll all do go beyond WWW in some ways, while also deliberately being more limited in some ways. But, some of the limitations can also have other benefits, e.g. save power and RAM and disk space, guarantee that some things are not done (enabling to take advantage of them, e.g. to improve accessibility and interoperability, etc), and others.

I think people don't post enough thoughtful, critical stuff on the web OR gemini since the 2010s. It's a big problem

OK, but there is a few things (although probably not enough, like you said). There is more than "the web and gemini", including e.g. Usenet, Gopher, etc. There is also private communications (IRC, email, etc) where they may discuss many things but are not published (although that does not necessarily mean that they are a good quality either, but some might be). And, some stuff which is not accessible from the internet, or is not compatible with your computer, or requires payment, or other problems.

Wow, all of these notifications are getting very overwhelming for me now, lol, so I'm just going to try to pick which ones I think are most important to respond to, and hope that's alright.

@darkghost I do understand why you are saying this, but I don't think it's as simple as that. Gemini should be used as a tool. That's how I want to use it. Right now, however, it cannot be used as a tool because there aren't many tools on here. So that's what I'm trying to do, make a bunch of tools for Gemini.

For example, I still have to use the web to search for solutions to programming problems and questions, because Gemini doesn't have what I need. And yet Gemini is supposed to be the perfect place for this type of content! How do I construct a WITH CTE clause in SQL? The answer isn't in Gemini, but it should be!

The golang documentation capsule (gemini://godocs.io) went down, unfortunately, so now that needs to be replaced. But in the meantime, it has reduced programming documentation that you can find on Gemini.

I don't want Gemini to be tiktok, I want it to be a tool that can carry out our most important tasks. Media tracking and reviews? That would be a pretty great tool in gemini. Programming documentation? Yes. Q&A? Definitely, although hopefully answered by experts in their fields. Learning materials? Yep.

The problem for me is there are not enough *tools* in Gemini that I have to now search out the ad-filled obnoxiously slow web to do anything I need.

Media proxies are part of these tools. While we don't want a tiktok that manipulates people's attention, we still want to allow people to take an entertainment break, and for that, we need the tools to allow people to select a piece of media they want to engage in and engage in it.

To me, there are 3 components to a network like Gemini: social, informational, and entertainment. Gemini can easily meet all 3 if it wants, and one is not more important than the others, imo, becauese it's always good to have diverse content on a network.

@Proton Well, a big part of Gemini's start was the whole gemlog stuff. It came from gopher, and when people joined, that's what they got on board with. The text format was built around doing what you need for gemlogs, our aggregators were built for sharing and discovering gemlogs, gemsub feeds were made for subscribing to gemlogs, and before that we literally had atom feeds.

So I think it just makes sense to have book review gemlogs, which is what goodreads is. Q&A gemlogs? Yeah, that's AuraGem Ask! You can submit a URL to a gemlog on AuraGem Ask, or if you don't have your own capsule, you can write it right on the Ask capsule.

The main thing I'm trying to solve is to entice diversification in gemlog content. If people see others asking questions about various topics over on AuraGem Ask, they might be more inclined to write a gemlog post answering it. If people see a book review, they might read that book, and then post their own review.

Also, I want the ability to look up *information* about books too. Again, another tool that Gemini would be great at. So, a Goodreads alternative serves all three components of a network: social, informational, and entertainment.

About that AuraGem Ask feature, where you can just post a link to your gemlog as an answer: to me this is an *essential* feature of these types of capsules because it allows AuraGem Ask to interact with our existing gemlog ecosystem. It doesn't force people to move their content to a centralized system, rather it acts as *another form of aggregator*, an aggregator/directory where you post your links directly to the category (and question) that the gemlog belongs under. ( @meidam )

@sbr You suggested that you could help me with some projects?

One of the things I would like help with is AuraRepo, if you are ever interested in that. It's a git interface for gemini, but the main thing I have left is I want to implement a wiki system within git that uses Titan. The wiki will be in a special wiki branch of the git repo.

The main stopping point right now is the go-git library doesn't have multiple worktree support, so either we have to implement that and submit a PR (this PR already started the work: https://github.com/go-git/go-git/pull/396), or we need a workaround.

Right now, these wikis are part of a repository, but once this is done, it could be generalized so that people can create wikis without all the other repository features; so that the wiki effectively becomes the main interface, even though it's backed by a git repo.

If you're not interested in this, then that's fine.

@clseibold Ill take a look today on my lunch break, are you on a slightly more dynamic comms like IRC? I loiter on libera chat if you want to ping me a message, there is a #gemini channel we could use which is otherwise rather dead.

@sbr Okay, I'll get on #gemini.

After reading the thread and the related articles I wrote a little post concerning the topic.

so we getting on irc?

edit: added my own two cents on m.pub.

After reading this huge thread I think we are all missing one massive talking point. What is going on here is THE problem with FLOSS development. Unless there is something pushing for further development no one does it. This is why we see so many clones of other software, people wanting their own tweaked version and then the project dies a few months or years later. I'd be amazed if even 30% of Github's repos was still maintained.

What can we do to get a community not only interested in a given project, but keep them interested. I love the GoodReads idea, I use BookWyrm and I keep a gmi page for my books. But honestly I can't see myself indefinitely working on a project even if I use it.

Development isn't just the creation of a piece of software. It is also maintenance. Someone needs to do the unsexy maintenance, keeping up with the libraries used and making sure it doesn't break. Interest will wane or new features will be added. I went through the Gemini servers a while back thinking of starting a capsule. A lot of them have multiple year old repos that haven't seen any action since the 2021 era. I couldn't be sure they would compile since they might need a 4 year old lib to work.

I know this is a hot take and totally against the free and open concept of the code we write...

But would it make sense to promote a community VCS, and push for people to work on an existing project over making your own? I know everyone wants to make their own stuff but I think we need to find a way to make community projects ACTUALLY BE community projects.

Some software will be completed enough that it is not necessary to add any new features, although you may still intend to correct bugs (unless it is good enough already), to port the software (unless it is emulated), improve the documentation, etc.

You can contribute to existing software as well as writing your own software. Sometimes it is something new and not only clones of existing software, but even clones of existing software can be made improved in many ways compared with the original software (e.g. my "Free Hero Mesh" software is a clone of Everett Kaser's "MESH:Hero" software). Sometimes, existing FOSS might be too different than what you wanted to do that the existing software cannot easily be changed to do what you wanted it to do (or to not do something that you want it to not do).

@zzo38 You are exactly right in why project death and splintering happens.

That doesn't really fix the issue though. We are now at the 5+ year mark for the protocol which means that many clients, servers and services are going to be hitting end of life on LTS versions of the libraries they use. Language version updates means you can't build half of the clients I'm seeing out there without having to first install an older version of Go or C# or Rust.

When I go looking at software if I see there hasn't been any files updated within 2 years I skip it. I know that the build system alone is going to be out of date. And I know that I too am not keeping up with anything old I wrote.

I have used software older than 2 years (and much more than that). The build system alone will not necessarily be out of date; it depends how the software is written and what build system it uses. Some programs are written that they can last much longer than that, especially if there are not many external dependencies.

Yes I was being slightly alarmist for a point.

It's not about how long the project has been around. It's that simply keeping up with security updates, keeping in step with latest language and build systems, etc show that most people stop looking at their own projects after its "good enough." This is fine in many cases.

But what this also means is that people stop looking at their bug reporting and feature requests. They stop putting in the effort. Most are probably burnt out which is natural. Others only like flashy new things. But if the complaint in this thread is that we need more people active, we need to start figuring out how to deal with burnout. How do we get less one person projects?