Vavr.io website down

[diversit]

Since a week or so the https://vavr.io website is gone.

[danieldietrich]

See https://x.com/danieldietrich/status/1732788750151713020

Also see https://danieldietrich.dev/drawing-a-clear-line/

[diversit]

Ok. Clear blog post. I can understand that after such a long time you want to move on. But Vavr is not a 'baby' anymore. It's mature and in use by many. There are plenty of contributors so why not hand it over to one or more capable hands so both the project and you can continue?

[danieldietrich]

Yes, I do not want do close/deprecate it. We need to find contributors/new owners.

[josealonso]

Yes, I do not want do close/deprecate it. We need to find contributors/new owners.

I just learnt about this library few months ago. So maybe I'm being innocent if I say that I find it strange that you need more contributors if there are over one hundred, according to this github.

[danieldietrich]

Dear @josealonso, I search at least one contributor who is willing to

• take over all Vavr accounts as an owner (GitHub, Twitter, Gitter, ...)
• consistently invest time during the next years to lead the project
• making strategic decisions about the future direction
• creating a vision for the project (even if it is just maintaining the legacy code base)
• ensuring code quality by reviewing PRs
• tacking care of the issue tracker and identifying related issues (by reading between the lines) and by understanding which features the requesters really need (maybe the features are already there but named differently etc)
• maintain releases
• maintain the docs
• maintain the website

Do you see? Most contributors relied on me in the past but I am not active anymore...

[josealonso]

Dear @josealonso, I search at least one contributor who is willing to

* take over all Vavr accounts as an owner (GitHub, Twitter, Gitter, ...)

* consistently invest time during the next years to lead the project

* making strategic decisions about the future direction

* creating a vision for the project (even if it is _just_ maintaining the legacy code base)

* ensuring code quality by reviewing PRs

* tacking care of the issue tracker and identifying related issues (by reading between the lines) and by understanding which features the requesters _really_ need (maybe the features are already there but named differently etc)

* maintain releases

* maintain the docs

* maintain the website

Do you see? Most contributors relied on me in the past but I am not active anymore...

I see, @danieldietrich, I appreciate your swift response. That is a lot of work. I feel like telling you I would like to participate, but the truth is I'm not even familiar with the codebase, only with the Scala features. I'm in my fourties and I need to re-order my priorities in life. Having said that, I'm currently unemployed and I spend all my "programming" time investigating JVM languages like Scala, Kotlin and Clojure. This year I'm focused on Kotlin, because I think it's the best solution for updating legacy Java codebases, although I admit Scala is more powerful. You spent almost ten years leading this project. You have devoted so many years to the development of this library. Is vavr really used in Spring ?? I didn't know that. I will look it up.

To sum up, I may be interested in being an active contributor, not the leader, since I'm sure it's a high quality codebase and I rarely have the luxury to work in challenging projects. I can afford to work at most for one year without being paid. Because if I make a commitment to work on vavr, I would stop my job seeking process.

NOTE: you might want to open an issue only for recruiting active contributors. I am sorry this doesn't belong here. Thank you!!

[danieldietrich]

Thank you for even considering taking the lead of the project. I wish you all the best for your future professional life, I am sure you will make the best out of it!

[josealonso]

Thank you for even considering taking the lead of the project. I wish you all the best for your future professional life, I am sure you will make the best out of it!

I said: I may be interested in being an active contributor, not the leader

[danieldietrich]

Never say never 😉

[EarthCitizen]

@danieldietrich I think most people would want to continue your vision and legacy even if you will no longer be active in it. Would you be willing to layout the vision you had for where the APIs need to go?

[thinstripe]

Yes, I do not want do close/deprecate it. We need to find contributors/new owners.

@danieldietrich I am a long time member/contributor to the Apache Software Foundation and have a good background in Scala/Clojure and have used vavr on a number of Java projects. I also raised a small pull request to this project recently which hasn't been picked up yet due to a lack of active maintainers. I would like to help meaningfully contribute to the project to keep it alive and healthy. I'd be happy to process pull requests and offer some of my free time with ongoing maintenance and possibly new features.

[EarthCitizen]

@thinstripe I have been unable to get a response here from @danieldietrich within 2 weeks. I am not sure if he will respond. I think we will have to contact him by email as he seems to either be on an extended break or has completely walked away from the project.

[thinstripe]

For this project to continue I think that excellent public documentation really needs to come back in some form. Without it being available it becomes much more difficult to convince colleagues to learn and adopt vavr and it will die.

[forresthopkinsa]

+1000 – even if the project is currently seeking a new maintainer, the domain registration cannot lapse. This project is widely used and the docs are essential. Aren't they hosted by Github for free anyway?

What can we do to get the domains back online?

[forresthopkinsa]

Can I volunteer to at least perform KTLO maintenance, e.g. holding the domains, keeping docs alive? This project is used by some major organizations and it's essential to at least keep the lights on.

[frecco75]

I can do maintenance too.

I use it in all companies I work and know developers using it. It's a great library, integrated with Spring framework, maybe that need some rework (it's better to use ValidationNel with NonEmptyList like in arrow-kt than Validation with Sequence!) and with virtual thread in Java 21 we can enhance performances on traverse/sequence, but very useful in enterprise!

[yeikel]

A project of this size and popularity may fit into the Apache or Eclipse Foundation, which could lead to funding and more contributions and additional benefits

At the same time, we would need to find a reliable lead first to even try applying to that

[forresthopkinsa]

There was a push to move it into the Eclipse foundation years ago, see here, here, and here.

Is the current blocker for web hosting just legal concerns? Could we just add boilerplate pages for these? I doubt there is anything unique about the vavr case.

[EarthCitizen]

Without responses from @danieldietrich, what can and cannot be done to move things forward? It seems as though he does not have the intention to participate in the migration to new ownership.

[diversit]

It's a pity Daniel is not responding anymore to help the transition and to share his road map.

I assume we could fork the repo and start working from there.

Regarding the site, the vavr.io domain is taken but several other options like vavr.org, vavr.info, vavr.site, vavr.net are available. Or perhaps just vavr.github.io. I would be happy to support by providing a domain name.

[EarthCitizen]

@diversit vavr.github.io seems like the option that would be easiest to go with?

[EarthCitizen]

A fork might be the only option without the help of Daniel, unless one of the current maintainers have owner-level access,

[hderms]

In the meantime I hosted the docs on https://pear-commerce.github.io/vavr-docs

not sure if there is another way to reach them

[renepanke]

There was a push to move it into the Eclipse foundation years ago, see here, here, and here.

Is the current blocker for web hosting just legal concerns? Could we just add boilerplate pages for these? I doubt there is anything unique about the vavr case.

FYI: I'm assuming the problem is that @danieldietrich is a german citizen and each german citizen if he published a publicly available article, documentation, website etc. has to disclose information about how to contact him officially. Therefore it would be necessary for Daniel to publicly announce where he lives, what his email is and a phone number, at least that's what I have in my head. There are companies in germany which offer the service to offer their addresses and contact details in the legal notice (Impressum in german) but this costs obviously money - money @danieldietrich is probably not wanting to pay since he decided to step back from this project anyways.

[stevenschlansker]

The Jdbi project ships Vavr integration. We're happy to keep this around for a while, but if the project does not reach a 1.0 milestone or at least find a new maintainer, we will probably deprecate and remove our glue code. Best wishes to Daniel and all involved.

[jaredmdobson]

@danieldietrich i'm willing to take over and do my best with all those responsibilities.

My immediate goals would be:

0. Remove you from everything so you can find some peace.
1. Get documentation and website back up.
2. Prioritize issues and goals, possibly schedule a meeting plan vision for project.
3. Get a new release out.

[EarthCitizen]

@jaredmdobson You will have to find him on Twitter, Linked-In, or email (all of which on his GH profile). He is not responding to any mentions here at all, and we need his help to move forward.

[jaredmdobson]

I reached out on Twitter, Twitter DM and Email. Working on updating the codebase now.

[pivovarit]

I would be willing to take the lead as well.

[EarthCitizen]

@jaredmdobson Did you get a response from him via those other channels?