Unladen Swallow is dead
This sort of thing is one of the reasons why I'm very careful in picking the pieces that make up the tools that I earn my living with.<p>Left right and center you're bombarded with 'use this', 'use that', but most of these projects end up not having much staying power and if you depend on them for the running of your business then sooner or later you might end up having to support them.<p>When I choose an open source component these are the things I like to see in the eco system around it before deciding to jump in (obviously not every project selected will have all of these, but more helps):<p>- multiple maintainers, active response to patches being sent in<p>- broad support, using open standards<p>- preferably a drop in replacement available<p>- lively community of people willing to help each other out<p>- two years track record with a good roadmap for future support<p>- people working on it because they like it, not because they get paid to (this one is probably very counter intuitive when you're looking at this problem from a business point of view, but it is my opinion that people working on something because they like it are automatically in for the long haul).<p>Every time I've been seduced by new, hot and sexy technology I've come to regret it sooner or later. Old, boring and solid seems to win the race every time.<p>Running a small shop means that the investment you make in a tool is one of the most important decisions you can make, the wrong decision could cost you a lot of time and/or cripple your company.<p>I hope that everybody using unladen swallow is able to easily transition to a replacement.