Open source software development is a double-edged sword. If you make something that’s half-decent, people want to use your time and resources to solve their problems. There’s a large amount of debate about how to Pay the Piper and working how to make open source sustainable.

But sometimes, it’s easier to actively mark projects as in a mothball state.

Unmaintained.tech provides a badge and a bit of detail in the click through to explain that any projects marked with this are not going to be maintained.

The great thing about open source is that with the right licence, you can take the code as is and change it to solve your problems. Just because the creator sunk hours into a thing doesn’t mean other people can’t benefit. However, because they worked on a thing at a time doesn’t mean that their ongoing time is up for grabs.

And with that, today, a year after it’s last public appearence, I’ve marked machiavelli as ‘No Maintenance Intended’. All currently open issues have been closed. New issues going forward will not be addressed. Fork the code, copy the innards, use it to save you time, but I won’t be spending any more of my time on it. I’ve already had issues talking about it, so marking it as Unmaintained is a major step forward for me to move on.