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Long Term Software Development

Recently the Dutch Electoral Board (where I am also a very part time advisor) invited me to do a talk reflecting on their open source Abacus vote tabulation software. Much software is now provided as a service, and is typically deployed continuously (CD, continuous deployment), surrounded by enough automated testing (CI, continuous integration) that we can be reasonably sure that a new revision is likely to at least work to some extent.

Recently the Dutch Electoral Board(where I am also a very part time advisor) invited me to do a talk reflecting on their open source Abacus vote tabulation software. In contrast, there is also still a huge world where people don’t appreciate such continuous changes combined with only a pretty good likelihood of things working. Drift away, leading to adjustments in your code or, worse, silent changes in behaviour Shift to new major versions with semantic changes, requiring rewrites on your part Get abandoned or simply disappear, or start to decay Get hijacked by (nation state) actors (think npm, pypi etc) Start to get monetized by the new VC owner Develop conflicting dependency requirements of their own

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