Quick Question

[MugenFighter]

If this project were to die (not saying it is dead) there would be something on the site to let us know right? Or would there even be a site at that point?

[hbelusca]

The ReactOS project is dead?! Oh, strange, I didn't notice that!

[EmuandCo]

Hm... then all these code changes everyone can see and be happy about were JUST A DREAM??? OMG!!!!

[MugenFighter]

The ReactOS project is dead?! Oh, strange, I didn't notice that!

No I am asking if it did die in the future

[MugenFighter]

Hm... then all these code changes everyone can see and be happy about were JUST A DREAM??? OMG!!!!

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I just asking a hypothetical question.

[MugenFighter]

Let me clarify that this question is hypothetical and has nothing to do with the project itself. It is just that I have followed some projects (not at this scale or level of professionalism) that got shut down and there wasn't much of a notice to the average user. I guess what I don't want to happen is that the person who is in charge of this project (not saying anything about that person) decides that "It's been good, but I'm shutting down this project." and shuts down the site and all source code and work is lost. It's just I have used some software where that happened and I don't want to be in that sort of position where I liked the project, but it was shut down and there wasn't even much of a notice to people like myself.

[Black_Fox]

Don't worry, the project is very alive

Hypothetically speaking, there are (at least) three important reasons why it wouldn't "disappear" without a trace:
- this is not a 1-man project, not even 10-man project... they ARE undermanned, but there is no single point of failure; if someone needs to leave, project goes on
- ReactOS has IRC conference room hosted on freenode, so there will probably be someone from the devs present to explain the situation even if the web and forums were gone
- you can clone the git mirror, after that you have all the source code with all the history in your PC

[DOSGuy]

I think the scenario you're describing is most likely in a project where a single person is responsible for most of the code commits. A project this size won't just die because one or two people abandon it. With the possible exception of the entire dev team dying on the same day, there's almost no chance of the project disappearing without notification. Only two scenarios seem realistic for the death of the project.

1. the project suspends by the mutual agreement of the development team, in which case there would be an announcement.
2. developers start abandoning the project and it dwindles away to nothing, in which case the last person out the door might forget to turn off the lights, but the community would notice the project collapsing and wouldn't be surprised by the project's death, even if there was never a formal announcement.