As part of the effort to keep my github account clean, in 2015 I moved all non-original repositories to a separate organisation named potherca-contrib. This brought my repository count back down to a manageable level.
Since then, my repository count has been steadily growing. To bring those numbers back down again, I decided to move all non-relevant repositories to another separate organisation.
The first question was: how to name that organisation?
When looking for words used to describe projects that are no longer being attended to, I came across a question on the english StackExchange site that asked the same. There were some useful suggestions (and some less useable ones like "zombified") but only a few of them.
Some more searching lead to the list of moved ports in the FreeBSD Ports Collection. Each entry states a reason for why a port has been moved. I like "Developer's focus have moved elsewhere" best.
I didn't read all 9000+ lines but random sampling added more entries to the list.
I finished of by running a few word through a thesaurus.
This lead to the following list:
- Abandoned
- Cancelled
- Ceased
- Closed
- Deactivated
- Dead
- Decommissioned
- Defunct
- Deprecated
- Deserted
- Discarded
- Discontinued
- Dropped
- End-of-life
- Expired
- Forsaken
- Given up
- Inactive
- Legacy
- Neglected
- No longer active
- No longer available
- No longer developed
- No longer functional
- No longer in use
- No longer maintained
- No longer needed
- No longer supported
- No longer under development
- Obsolete
- Old
- Outdated
- Redundant
- Rejected
- Removed
- Resigned
- Retired
- Stalled
- Sunsetted
- Superseded
- Terminated
- Unmaintained
- Unsupported
- Unused
- Vacated
Grouping words together by meaning (more or less) with the word that appealed to me most in the lead, I brough the forty-plus words down to the following list of nine:
- Abandoned (Deserted / Forsaken)
- Ceased (Dead / End-of-life / Terminated)
- Deprecated (Closed / Deactivated / Defunct)
- Discontinued (Cancelled / Discarded/ Dropped)
- Expired (Decommissioned / Retired / Resigned / Sunsetted / Vacated)
- Inactive (Given up / Neglected / Stalled)
- Legacy (Removed / Unused)
- Obsolete (Old / Outdated / Redundant / Rejected)
- Unmaintained (Unsupported)
Various words were too case-specific, generic or vague for my taste.
Removing those words further shortened the list to these five:
- Abandoned
- Deprecated
- Inactive
- Legacy
- Unmaintained
After some deliberation I settled on Abandoned.
Now... On to the task of moving repositories over...