Can you ossify open source software?

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Of course, go look at all the foss projects on GitHub that haven’t been touched in years

which actively used projects are those?

is there a way to fine them?

For example momentjs was a datetime JavaScript library

Eventually the devs stopped supporting or moved on

Other projects replace it like dayjs or something else

Or other devs may fork momentjs but you’d need to name it something else so it can be installed easily

So essential that library is “ossified” however - anyone can fork it and change it — imo that’s a new library though

is a soft fork a “new library?”

It’s just a code fork - you could change anything you want so it could be completely compatible or it could change many things making it incompatible

Same way I could take Damus code and change it - I could just change the ui and still interact with anyone or I could replace Nostr with rest that only connects to my own server

Nope. There will always be new bugs, new attack vectors, and new optimizations. Not to mention human inclinations.