Active development: is this repo abandoned?

[duvh93]

The last commit dates back of 10 months.
Seeing 350+ open issues and 50+ pull requests, I guess there's no other authorized maintainer other than the author.

Are there good forks under active development out there?

[borgmanJeremy]

I am actively working on my fork of the project mostly just adding features that are asked for here that seem compelling. I really want to get stuff merged back here whenever the author returns.

I would be happy to collaborate with others on a shared repo rather than my personal one. Then we could agree on a shared roadmap / refactor list. It would be great to commit effort in a common location with multiple maintainers to prevent future stagnation.

[LeBaux]

@borgmanJeremy If it ever comes to the point of you making a separate fork, please call it HeatShot.

I wonder how much time has to pass for that to happen, though. Judging by the number of GitHub stars and the fact that is a dedicated Linux screenshot tool, I imagine quite a number of people rely on this software.

[dhimmel]

Looks like repo owner @lupoDharkael was active on GitHub on 2020-05-01, making the commit at godotengine/godot@38b1829. @lupoDharkael can you comment on your interest in maintaining flameshot going forward and whether you'd be interested in adopting additional maintainers here?

[radoeka]

I hope that all is well with @lupoDharkael.

There are many forks of this nice application. Would it be possible to use one of the forks (for the time being)?
As I would like to use flameshot at MS Windows, the fork should provide an .exe file for me. Is there a fork that provides an .exe?

I checked the forks, and most of them are just behind of this authoritative repository. There are 3 that stand out:

1. https://github.com/DrunkenPoney/flameshot - 16 commits ahead of this
2. https://github.com/33kk/flameshot - 14 commits ahead of this one
3. https://github.com/MadddinTribleD/flameshot - 8 commits ahead of this one. With a update to alter the use of appveyor: MadddinTribleD@7b3d6b6

Would any of these be able to continue the development for the time being and provide an exe version of the flameshot?

[radoeka]

borgmanJeremy adds a circle counter https://github.com/borgmanJeremy/flameshot. Might be candidate too.

The overall list is:
DrunkenPoney: 16
33kk: 14
MadddinTribleD: 8
hosiet: 8
CloseToZero: 5
borgmanJeremy: 4
George-lewis: 3
zebulon75018: 3
fpkmatthi: 3
magiruuvelvet: 3
mark-ulrich: 2
rodriguescelio: 2
appcove: 2
creepinson: 2

[HW71]

@lupoDharkael has been tagged many times in the past in different issues here - unfortunately to no avail. He seems to be active on Twitter, though, so at least it looks like he's fine in these crazy times we live in. Maybe he is busy with other stuff - but owning an actively used repo also comes with some duties. At least adding some maintainers for handling all of these pull requests would be great. Alternatively, a comment regarding the future of this repo would be needed so the community can get a "Plan B" up and running...

[mmahmoudian]

How about creating an "organization" on github, merge all these forks that @radoeka suggested and then give all these devs maintainer access? This way even if/when @lupoDharkael wants to work, he can.

[borgmanJeremy]

I'd be happy to get mine merged in. I'm currently working on clearing out some of the technical debt... Porting to cmake, fixing depreciation warning, etc

Before merging to an organization we need to make sure all maintainers agree on the project direction.

[radoeka]

But, besides flameshot, there is also another nice screen capture tool. Perhaps all effort should be put into that one, being https://github.com/ksnip/ksnip This tool (ksnip) has for example the circle counter, and adding text to the screenshot just works, and it is (very) actively maintained....

[mmahmoudian]

@radoeka I don't see much of a difference is features that make me switch to ksnip. Also Flameshot looks much more convenient as used don't open a new window only to annotate the screenshot.

Perhaps all effort should be put into that one

I personally think FOSS benefits from diversity. If we aggregate all the efforts around ksnip, we are putting all our eggs into one single basket (which oddly enough is also managed by one single person which can go dark and maintenance of that project also have the same destiny as this one).

My vote (if it counts) is on giving Flameshot a chance by creating an organization and put multiple people as maintainer. We can elect one or two devs to also play the role of project manager, and we can have such election for example every half a year or so. Flameshot has 5.9k stars, 420 forks and 120 watchers, meaning we have enough voting population for such election. The license of Flameshot is GPL3 which allow us to adopt the code and form such organization and advance the project.

[radoeka]

@mmahmoudian I just wanted to have another possibility brought to light. I like Flameshot as well and it will be very nice whether it remains to exist. As such I agree with suggestion. I'm curious to see what comes out of this.

[Rmano]

My vote (if it counts) is on having Flameshot a chance by creating an organization and put multiple people as maintainer.

+1, I think it would be nice to see flameshot prosper. Let see if @lupoDharkael can just chime in!

[dhimmel]

Tweeted the following:

@Lupo_Dharkael, #flameshot is an awesome screenshot tool! Just wanted to ping you about this issue regarding continued development, in case you had any input.

An organization sounds like a great idea. Should probably make sure there is no issue with keeping the name flameshot...

With this I will unsubscribe from this issue, since it looks like this is now in more capable hands!

[mmahmoudian]

Inspired by radoeka's comment, I did a little bit of scripting to get the general status of the forks. Here are the general statistics:

• Total number of forks: 414
  • ahead: 22
  • behind: 211
  • diverged: 32
  • identical: 143
  • ERROR: 6 (meaning while retrieving their data from Github API, it returned 404 or other errors)

To see the general status of "diverged" and "ahead" forks I plotted the following:

It is up to the community to consider including the diverged ones into the mix, but I personally suggest going with "ahead" forks. The following table is a list of Github users with a fork that is ahead of this (lupoDharkael/flameshot) repo and is sorted based on the number of commits. It would worth acknowledging that number of commits is a blunt metric and I was not able to extract the number of added and deleted lines fro each of these forks.

login	ahead_by
DrunkenPoney	16
33kk	14
MadddinTribleD	8
hosiet	8
borgmanJeremy	4
fpkmatthi	3
Phalelashvili	3
George-lewis	3
magiruuvelvet	3
zebulon75018	3
rodriguescelio	2
creepinson	2
mark-ulrich	2
appcove	2
ozanerturk	1
Mantas-2155X	1
hjedqbkki	1
Tiller	1
filipkilibarda	1
marhkb	1
agaida	1
ZetaoYang	1

[radoeka]

When moving to another repository, think of what to do with the reported issues. Some of these might be solved due to new code in the repository, but it is probably not possible to close the issue. To make the move possible @lupoDharkael should refer to the other repositoriy... Or is that not needed?

[mmahmoudian]

I'm no expert, but I think a referral to the new repo would officiate the migration, but if we had access to @lupoDharkael or if he was responding, we wouldn't have needed to take such route and migrate to a new repo. Also for packages in distros we would face some problem if they don't make their build from the new repo.

I don't know what is the regulation or general practice for an abandoned FOSS under GPL3. Perhaps it would be nice if someone with some experience comment here.

Similar situation happened to keepassx and it was abandoned for quite some time, and then some folks forked the repo and continued it under keepassXC which now has twice as much as the stars that keepassx has with a very active community. Perhaps we can ask Jonathan (@droidmonkey) and Toni (@hifi) what is the procedure in their experience.

[borgmanJeremy]

Is anyone else on here willing to be a maintainer of the project? I am happy to help with feature development and maintenance but the first task should be identifying the core maintainers and making sure they all agree on the project direction.

I am personally interested in cleaning up technical debt before adding many new features.

• Porting to CMAKE (completed on my fork)
• Refactor to be more idiomatic modern cpp (In process but is a large task)

I also do not really want to maintain release for every distro. It makes much more sense to me to target snap or flatpack to relieve maintenance burden. A large number of issues that are currently opened are solved by telling people to build it from source.

[mmahmoudian]

@borgmanJeremy I suggest that people who have already worked on the code, those that have repos ahead of the original repo in terms of commits (e.g with at least 2 commits ahead), become maintainers and we as a community elect two people (in addition to @lupoDharkael) to lead the project. This repo has 120 watchers and 5.9k stars which means the election would be relatively fair. We can then have the election in 6 months and re-evaluate the activity of the lead maintainers as a community.

I personally think that having largest number of commits is not a good metric for electing lead of dev, as the result I wrote a script that dug into the issues (open and closed) of this repo and looked for the number of times each of the devs I named on this comment have participated in the discussions. Then I made the following figure. I think the most ideal candidate should be on the top right corner of this plot and since no one is up there, we should go for the next best candidates. I thought to put the criteria to those who have commented at least three times or have more than 5 commits ahead of the origin (the 🔴 data-points).

Feel free to discuss, comment, ...

[droidmonkey]

Similar situation happened to keepassx and it was abandoned for quite some time, and then some folks forked the repo and continued it under keepassXC which now has twice as much as the stars that keepassx has with a very active community. Perhaps we can ask Jonathan (@droidmonkey) and Toni (@hifi) what is the procedure in their experience.

I could probably write a book on FOSS takeovers at this point 😵! I know nothing about this particular project, but here are some generic pointers from our experience:

1. Change the name, slightly. Keep package maintainers in mind who will probably deploy your version alongside the original until you are dominant. keepassx is still in many Linux distros and used (unknown reasons).
2. Come up with a new logo. This is your branding and what will be used in news articles, Twitter, the app/library itself, documentation, etc. This is a great chance to rebirth the project.
3. Be prepared for an onslaught of issues and pull requests. Be candid about your roadmap and expected work flow. Setup your labels and review processes. Have a continuous integration server.
4. If deploying an application cross-platform get your hands on code signing certificates for Windows and macOS. They cost money, seek donations.
5. HAVE FUN. You took over the project because you were pissed no one was doing anything with it. Remember where you came from 😄

Logistics note: we originally forked the Keepassx repository, then quickly created an organization and asked GitHub to break the "Fork" to make us standalone. Best decision made early on.

P.S. - After reading the README, if this project can be deployed cross-platform I could use this instead of Snagit. Fully support this effort!

[borgmanJeremy]

@mmahmoudian That seems like a good starting point. Droidmonkey had some really good advice so I am okay going forward with this at this point.

Anyone have good name suggestions? Thats always the hardest part :)

[LeBaux]

My nomination for the new name is still Heatshot, it received a few likes over here so why not. It's aligned with a list of suggestions made by @droidmonkey. Allow me to explain how I came up with the name in the first place:

1. Derives from Flameshot. I suspect Flameshot itself might have been a derivate name since there is massively popular screenshot add-on for Firefox, FireShot. It was later ported to Chrome and adopted the freemium model, gutting most of the functionality. It was an amazing tool for years, I was using it myself in Firefox 2.x days. Maybe this was the moment that made the original author of Flameshot angry enough to write his own tool. It was no longer fire, only a flame. And now I think we can make it even calmer, a heat. Basically following the thermodynamic tradition that would eventually lead to heatdeath of the universe. Come to think of it, Heatdeath is a damn cool name as well, but I think it might not exactly inspire confidence in users and it does sound more like a name of a nihilistic metal band, rather than screenshot tool.

2. Making things cooler and blue is a Linux thing. Back in 2006 Mozilla entered a dispute with Debian over the use of the trademark names. The name "Icerabbit" was suggested first, as a cool parody to Firefox. It later was later settled on "Iceweasel" and frankly, to this day it is my favourite name for a browser. I know this is not a real paradigm, but I'd like to think software for Linux is always cooler, as in less chaos, less marketing, less fuss. Another example is Chromium, open-source version of Chrome without all the Google crap. Coincidentally, it also has a, calmer logo made of shades of blue. The Flameshot logo is licenced under Free Art License 1.3 (FAL 1.3), therefore we can simply modify it and carry the legacy (after all, the OG author of Flameshot deserves it):

→→→

Of course, this is just a quick mockup. This also alleviates the need for making the new logo.

3. Memorable and relevant. Of course, Heatshot is a play on words. I'm old enough to remember BOOM HEADSHOT youtube guy and played a lot of counter strike 1.6 with friends. The only problem with this name is the fact that Google is autocorrecting it to headshot. As with all news or made-up words, it will pick it up eventually. For our purposes, we just make it visible in distro repositories and that can be achieved by describing it as, Heatshot - Cooler brother of now abandoned flameshot screenshot tool. All keywords are there. The final push should be announcing the forking initiative to the Linux news websites, I can take care of that. This should give us a good starting point in terms of early adaptation and help to establish a name for search engines.

4. Least amount of Work. Unless someone will come with a better name, its practically done and you guys only need to focus on the code itself.

Name, logo, website

Now I'm slowly rolling over to administrative stuff and getting ahead of myself. Even if we come up with a better name, we still might need a domain and a website. It is not critical, just nice to have. I can take care of the initial website (+hosting), my daily job is WordPress. The issue is domain/hosting access and ownership. I don't want to forcibly insert myself into anything, so if you know about a great way for open source projects to manage joint/collective accounts of these types, feel free to take over this part or suggest a better approach. Plus, if you eventually want to accept donations, it is great to establish these things early. Does anyone have experience with this? Is there any preferred foundation you know about that would help us with this?

I just want to avoid one person having keys to everything. It happened here and in many other open-source projects that are much bigger than Flameshot. A notable example that comes to mind is Solus distro. It might feel like I'm needlessly overcomplicating things but I believe it is best to sort these types of things early and avoid trouble later.

ANYWAY, I put forward 2 names:

1. Heatshot
2. Heatdeath (@droidmonkey said I should have fun, so...)

//EDIT: I don't want to create an unnecessary reply, @mmahmoudian suggestion to use GitHub pages makes sense and it is perfectly adequate, somehow it slipped my mind we can just use simple static page and be done with it. Scratch the idea about the website/domain for now.

[mmahmoudian]

@droidmonkey Thank you for your kind input. You made some valid points some of which I've never thought of 👍

---

@LeBaux Thanks for enlightening me. I used to use FireShot (good ol' days) but somehow my brain didn't make the connection between "Flameshot" and "Fireshot" 🤦 .

Regarding the domain/hosting, to keep things simple, we can use the Github pages that provides xxxxx.github.io domain as well. This way we would have a working website and yet no one owns the domain or hosting and we also cut the costs. I used to use Solus and I was a huge fan (still am but have lost some weight. Imho it was a shame that ikey's went dark for some time). Anyhow, I think any registered domain should technically have an owner (person or organization) and since one person scenario might not be a good idea for obvious reasons, and we don't have an organization, I suggest we move forward with github.io concept for the time being. Perhaps the project can later join KDE, Gnome or any other organization.

For collecting Ideas I would suggest creating two new issues in this repo, one for name and one for logo, and give everyone one week to post their suggestions as comments. At the end of the week we can have a poll and have the final verdict. If you agree with this approach, give this comment at least 5 🚀 reactions and I'll create the issues and start the one week time. (The reason for 5 is that there are 9 participants to this thread and ceiling(9/2) is 5 meaning more than 50% of participants have agreed)

[radoeka]

For the (new) name: a combination of screen/monitor, screenshot should do => perhaps moonshot (monitor + screenshot)? To me it sounds cool ;)

For the name think of a nice url as well, for example something ending in; .fun .hot (flames.hot), .joy, .monster (flame.monster), screen.ninja, .lol, .spot, .you. .pics, .wow, .zone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains

Nice idea to open issues to decide on the name and logo.

Let's try to get in contact with @lupoDharkael for ~ 3 more weeks, till 1 September?

With Github readme pages, it is possible to make a nice interactive page, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECuqb5Tv9qI

[Rmano]

Let's try to get in contact with @lupoDharkael for ~ 3 more weeks, till 1 September?

Someone using Twitter (I don't) could try there...

[mmahmoudian]

@Rmano From his paypal donation page, I managed to get his full name ("Alejandro Sirgo Rica"), but I couldn't manage to find his twitter account using his Github username or his name. Do you know his Twitter ID?

---

Also while googling, I found a fork of flameshot tha is not on github and is one commit ahead:
https://git.rlab.io/forks/flameshot/-/commits/master
Perhaps @borgmanJeremy can see if he has already covered this last commit in his fork and if not, pull and merge it.

[radoeka]

Do you know his Twitter ID?

Lupo_Dharkael

[LeBaux]

I wrote him a message on twitter. Unless I reply here, assume he never got back to me.

[lupoDharkael]

Hi! sorry for the (long) delay.
I was thinking about working again on this project this summer but that didn't happen in the end. I started Flameshot because I felt I needed something more usable for taking screenshots on Linux.
When it started gaining popularity the repository flooded with open issues and requests and it started to feel overwhelming. I tried to keep up because I know a lot of people uses Flameshot but I started to feel burned. I have some stuff going on in my life and university steals a lot of time.
I didn't want to check the notifications of this repository because that would be adding stress on top of more responsibilities I have to manage so I started to ignore this project.

I'm happy to let the community continue my work but I'd need help about choosing who to trust first, a lot of people has this software installed and it is my responsibility to satisfy the trust they put on me choosing to install my software.
I'll keep active reading this thread and I'll do my best to help the transition towards a community based development.

[mmahmoudian]

@lupoDharkael Thanks for replying here. It's good to know that you are safe, and also it is good to know your priorities and concerns.

If folks here don't mind, I reiterate what I have suggested previously and people in this thread showed support on the idea, it might be a good idea to take the project into a github organization in which you can have the development leading role as well as one or two people who know the code and share the same vision with you in terms of where this project goes and what are the milestones. From there after, the website can be a separate repo in the same github organization and can have its own journey as a repo.

To assist with who have showed the competence of pushing the code further, I did a bit of analysis on the issues and the forks to get a short-list of candidates that can collaborate with you in maintaining the project and developing it further. Of course this is just a numerical quantitative preliminary analysis just to bootstrap the whole thing. I believe you can even start a Gitter (or Discord, Element, or what ever platform) room to get to have small chats with some of these devs and the community in order to share your concerns and we can get to a sustainable solution for such an amazing FOSS project.

You can also go with the route of creating a poll and let the community choose the maintainer dev (hopefully based on their previous contributions, PR and etc.). Such poll can happen annually or bi-annually to keep up the spirit. Discourse can also be used to have the feature requests more organized if needed in later stages.

[radoeka]

Some more data:

Forks

login ahead_by
DrunkenPoney 16
33kk 14
MadddinTribleD 8
hosiet 8
borgmanJeremy 4

Contributors

https://github.com/lupoDharkael/flameshot/graphs/contributors
AlfredoRamos: 25 commits, overall very code wise active https://github.com/AlfredoRamos
Hosiet: 23 commits, code and issue active https://github.com/hosiet
Juanma1980: 11 commits
ZetaoYang: 8 commits, one of the last commits to flameshot? https://github.com/ZetaoYang

Active issue responders (according the graph of @mmahmoudian)

borgmanJeremy
ZetaoYang

Active in this issue

borgmanJeremy
mmahmoudian

From this issue; it would be nice when mmahmoudian would be able to step in, and help lupoDharkael to make the transition to an organization possible.

From the list above it would be nice when borgmanJeremy would be given access to the repository to help out with the code.

[mmahmoudian]

Meeting details

I think it would be time to read the results from the forms as everyone who wanted to participate would have done it already.
Based on the poll I would like to suggest "2020.08.19 16:00" UTC time using Jitsi which got 71.4% vote. I do hope the time is also suitable to @lupoDharkael schedule. I will create the room about half an hour prior to the meeting and it should be accessible through this link or by clicking on the following icon:

The call does not have passwords and it is considered as public event. Anyone can join the meeting to participate or listen.

I added a few of the timezones here for participants' convenience:
https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/?pl=1&lid=658225,100,2950159,3117735&h=658225

Please make sure to familiarize yourself with:

• What @lupoDharkael mentioned
• About Github organizations

---

General results of the polls

The detailed result of the Google form is available via the following spreadsheet (as readonly):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qXETNPvXCCj2nZRmTJJigCYt31wFj5hJWpp4milf0jo/edit?usp=sharing

[radoeka]

@mmahmoudian very good development. To all meeting participants, make it a good and successful meeting.

[MadddinTribleD]

I hope that all is well with @lupoDharkael.

There are many forks of this nice application. Would it be possible to use one of the forks (for the time being)?
As I would like to use flameshot at MS Windows, the fork should provide an .exe file for me. Is there a fork that provides an .exe?

I checked the forks, and most of them are just behind of this authoritative repository. There are 3 that stand out:

1. https://github.com/DrunkenPoney/flameshot - 16 commits ahead of this

2. https://github.com/33kk/flameshot - 14 commits ahead of this one

3. https://github.com/MadddinTribleD/flameshot - 8 commits ahead of this one.  With a update to alter the use of appveyor: [MadddinTribleD@7b3d6b6](https://github.com/MadddinTribleD/flameshot/commit/7b3d6b6f3e11f6688166b0e052f204afd9590d38)

Would any of these be able to continue the development for the time being and provide an exe version of the flameshot?

I change #732 to provide an artifact via appveyor. So the exe should be available for the next 6 month

As for maintaining the repo further, I would be down to help.
I dont yet have any experience with that, but would be happy to try

[mmahmoudian]

@MadddinTribleD Join the call as explained here. The least you can get is to get to know what has been discussed, and in the ideal case you will get to know firsthand how to effectively contribute.

[p4vook]

Am I right that the call has already passed?

[Martin-Eckleben]

Am I right that the call has already passed?

No.
It's scheduled for 19.08.20 16:00 UTC.
Right now its 19.08.20 08:26 UTC.
(which the first simple Google query shows)

[mmahmoudian]

@pavel-the-best No it is in about 7.5 hours. The call will be at "2020.08.19 16:00" UTC time and the current UTC time is: https://time.is/UTC

---

To avoid cluttering this thread, I would suggest contacting me via twitter @mmahmoudian if you think your question and its answer would not be useful to others.

[p4vook]

Ah, I see, thanks.
Turned out that I have problems with reading).
I thought it was on 16.08.

[lupoDharkael]

I'd appreciate if we could have another one next week (probably 27 or 28 of this month), I wasn't able to be at a computer with internet for the first one. I have to stay out of home a lot so it is hard for me to attend a webcall before that date.

[ndren]

Quick question @lupoDharkael -- could you pin this issue? It might more effectively clear up things.

[StyleT]

Hi folks!
Here are the meeting minutes from the call that was kindly organised & scheduled by @mmahmoudian.
Meeting participants: @MadddinTribleD , @StyleT, @ThePurple , @pavel-the-best , @szszoke, @mmahmoudian

Unfortunately @lupoDharkael wasn't able to attend the call.

General discussions and roles

• @borgmanJeremy had to cancel in the last minute but he sent his points and comments before the meeting and they were read by Mehrad in the meeting.
• @StyleT and @ThePurple participated on behalf of NameCheap
  • NameCheap needed a cross-platform screenshot solution (Win/Linux) and they adopted Flameshot
  • There is a commercial interest to this project from NameCheap as they are using it for their customer support, therefore Namecheap can provide some CI/CD infrastructure and, in future, sponsorship for the development of the project.
  • The codebase of Namecheap fork is publicly accessible through https://github.com/namecheap/flameshot/tree/master_nc
• @pavel-the-best agreed to package the software for Gentoo.
• @MadddinTribleD is not yet familiar with the codebase but is interested in contributing
• Szabolcs has experience with QT and can collaborate on general issues.
• @mmahmoudian can collaborate and contribute in the organization of matters at hand.

Agreed course of actions:

• @StyleT created a public Slack workspace for flameshot in order to provide alternative place to discuss the development of the project. Now @mmahmoudian, @ThePurple and @StyleT are the admins there, and we're happy to add more active collaborators as well as @lupoDharkael.
• Ask @lupoDharkael to create an organization, create maintainer role, and provide sufficient access to potential contributors (see below).
• the Github Kanban (currently inactive) will be used to coordinate the tasks.

Potential contributors list

• @MadddinTribleD - not yet familiar with the codebase, will help to sort out incoming PRs
• @StyleT - Namecheap rep, see Collaboration proposal from Namecheap, Inc #798 for plan of actions
• @ThePurple - Namecheap rep, see Collaboration proposal from Namecheap, Inc #798 for plan of actions
• @pavel-the-best - no QT experience yet, will help with CI/CD, issues and review some PRs
• @szszoke - has experience with QT, not yet familiar with the codebase, will help to sort out incoming PRs
• @mmahmoudian - project coordinator
• @borgmanJeremy - plan of actions TBD

TL;DR

• @lupoDharkael we kindly ask you to transfer project under GitHub organisation and provide management permissions to at least @mmahmoudian and @StyleT in addition to yourself, so we can add other contributors and start sorting things out. We will also schedule another call for the next week to discuss with you all the details, as you requested (@mmahmoudian will post an update soon here). If you won't be available to do so in a 3 weeks - our plan B is to create a fork, but this is highly undesirable solution.
• EVERYONE please join the public Slack workspace for flameshot

Hope we all together will restart development of this project and make it best in class 😃 💪

[mmahmoudian]

As @lupoDharkael suggested, I created another webcall poll to find the proper time (The time is in UTC):
https://jawanndenn.de/poll/3e8b77bfe497df11fa30363f5b958533617d7a22bc6fa67456abf1ff0dba3d6e

To help you choose the time I made this custom link to convert timezones:
https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/?pl=1&lid=658225,100,2950159,3117735&h=658225

I will also post the link on public Slack workspace for flameshot.

---

@lupoDharkael would you please pin this issue so that others can find it easily on the issue page

[mmahmoudian]

Based on the current responses to the poll, it is definitive that the meeting will be on 2020.08.28 sometime between 16:00 to 20:00 UTC time. Let's wait until end of tomorrow (2020.08.25 23:59 UTC) to give others a last chance to participate in the poll so that we can have more participation from the community. Then on 26th if there were still more than one suitable time, I will ask people on Slack's Flameshot channel about the most preferred time and then I announce it here and also on Slack's announcement channel.

@lupoDharkael although we know both 27th and 28th are suitable for you I would be thankful if you can mark the times that are suitable to your schedule.

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For everyone's convenience, here is the current state of the poll:

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Please join the Slack for discussions and updates.

[p4vook]

@lupoDharkael could you please join the slack and vote in the time selection poll?
Because, as @StyleT already said, we have a plan B to create a fork and move it to organization, but that is highly undesirable solution.

[Martin-Eckleben]

Hey @lupoDharkael,

I personally think you should transfer repo maintainer rights to one of the people in the thread (probably @mmahmoudian or @StyleT) right away without the extra pressure of meetings and deadlines on your shoulders.

You seem to have enough of that already.

I understand that you want to ensure quality in the future but tbh. you let that argument slip for a while yourself.

Nobody profits from a fork!
Not the users, not you, not the future maintainers.
Everybody "loses".

Trust the community approach and we take all responsibility off of you.
Some clicks and you never have to worry about this project anymore and maybe one day step in again with a smile on your face and regained free time and strength :)
And until then users get best in class software from us :)

P.S.
Whatever it is you are going through - I personally wish you all the best and from personal experience can confirm that the cliché "time heals all wounds" is true ;)

[LeBaux]

@mmahmoudian contacted me outside of github and we talked about this project at length. He urged me to attend the calls because my topmost priority is keeping the FOSS spirit of the project. We share this particular interest when it comes to flameshot. My enthusiasm and energy quickly faded when my dad was diagnosed with ALS (no need to comment on this, I don't want to derail the discussion). And that brings me to my point.

Life happens, priorities change. It is normal.
The crucial part here is governance so you won't get stuck again.

Personally I would prefer if @lupoDharkael stayed and served as sort of a "board of directors", giving the project oversight while leaving the daily duties to folks who have time and motivation. But there should be always 2-3 guys in charge who are reachable and can keep the project and each other in check. My 2c.

I feel we might be pressuring lupo too much, especially because every other comment mentions forking flameshot (I was part of the problem) and sometimes even making 2 clicks is a struggle. Or opening a link from an email. Everybody who experienced depression/anxiety knows this feeling all too well. Development is halted for almost a year now, so let's not suddenly make this a problem that needs to be solved in matter of days.

Thank you.

[mmahmoudian]

As promised, after the poll I figured that the date is clearly settled to be 2020.08.28 but there are more than one available time that is suitable to everyone participating. On Slack I asked if anyone has any preference and based on the voting I would like to announce that the webcall will be held at 2020.08.28 17:00 UTC using the same Jitsi meeting link. Please feel free to join the call even if you have not participated in the polls.

I will create the meeting room about half an hour beforehand in case anyone wants to join and have off-topic chat or test the audio and etc.

☕ Hopefully see many of you in the call. Let's have a casual and fun discussion about this amazing piece of FOSS.

[lupoDharkael]

Hi everyone! I came back from my travel. See you tomorrow in the webcall 👍

[lupoDharkael]

The webcall took place and it served to decide the new route of the project. I'm going to move Flameshot to an organization and add 2 new contributors. They will start working on small things such as fixes, fixing build system and repo management. I'll be monitoring their work so I can see how they work and what they do. That way they can earn my trust.
A few weeks after that we will have another webcall so we can evaluate the progress and the next steps.
I'll be creating the organization tonight or tomorrow so Flameshot can start to be alive again! (After that I'll add the contributors and close this issue)

[Martin-Eckleben]

@lupoDharkael
Could you also please pin this issue?
So we can "collect" and keep everyone informed here?

Most of the discussion is done in Slack
(https://join.slack.com/t/flameshotworkspace/shared_invite/zt-h12voenk-ruupY9FT__akZc0einOEQQ)
to avoid spamming this thread.

[Martin-Eckleben]

Just to keep everybody up to date:

• @lupoDharkael moved the repo to the organization flameshotapp and renamed it flameshot-org
• first new maintainers under his supervision are appointed and it will start to become alive again

[HW71]

Awesome, thanks a lot everyone involved - and also for keeping us posted! :-)