Does anyone know status and future of the JQueryTools library? Is project abandoned? [closed]

Question

We use JQueryTools library (http://flowplayer.org/tools/index.html), but haven't seen any progress in last 12 months or so in terms of new development or bug fixes. There is no place on the website where I can find contact information to send in a question or two, could not post anything to the forum, and blog has been closed too.

It certainly looks like an abandoned project, but wanted to see if anyone has better insights than I do. I really like this library and what it provides, so will be really sad to see it go.

I wish we all - the consumers of open source software - sometimes realize that those developers who are producing wonderful libraries saving us significant time and energy have financial needs too! There are thousands of users of JQueryTools and some of them even charge their clients/customers $100 or more per hour for their time, but we fail to make even $50 or $100 onetime contribution to the project that provides us valuable libraries, saving us time and money! Hope in 2012 we all change our way of thinking about open source software.

Thanks.

Disappearance

flowplayer.org/tools/forum/20/66697 I found this article on that website which does indictate that JQueryTools 2.0 is in the pipeline but it has been a little quiet recently I agree. – Watercolor

Just my experience, but we struggled mightily with jQuery Tools before finding jQuery validate and jQueryUI worked best for us. – Czarina

Most comments in here confirm my doubts about the JQueryTools project. If you look at forums, you will notice that after birth of his child a year ago, Tero nearly disappeared from the scene, and now disabled new postings to forums, closed his blog and so on. He obviously is a very savvy developer, and has produced a very nice software library. In forums, some people are angrily complaining about lack of updates and what not, but I DIDN'T SEE ONE POST (myself included) asking Tero to see if we the users of his library could somehow help out by making small financial contributions. – Disappearance

Answer 1

If I look at GitHub, I see:

bradrobertson authored October 26, 2011

Question about the future can be asked at: http://flowplayer.org/tools/forum/20/66697. That thread should give you some explanation as to why activity has been low.

FlowPlayer (the other product) is growing more popular every day. I don't think that project will be abandoned. As for the tools... I don't know. Maybe you (or your company) could contribute to the project.

Selwin

I have been checking that thread for few months now. One thing you will observe is that Tero is completely absent since June 2011. I even noticed that their commercially licensed Flowplayer product has some users waiting for answers for more than a month, hence my post here to see if someone knew about it beyond the thread you referred. Thank you! – Disappearance

FlowPlayer has a commercial license with 'tech support'. We wrapped the FlowPlayer in our own jQuery wrapper, so any weird stuff is handled by the wrapper as we don't like to edit 3rd party code. – Selwin

I meant August 2011. As for my contribution, while I have tight finances, I still have been contributing to important projects for me (3 this January), amounts between $50 to $100, completely unsolicited! I do it because I believe in these projects. – Disappearance

Kees, sorry I didn't realize that you may be involved in Flowplayer development team. If you are, can I connect offline with you as I need to discuss specifics on commercial licensing. – Disappearance

@Disappearance hahaha, no I'm not involved in development. I understand the frustration. I'm wondering what the status is as well. – Selwin

So as of 5-20-13, that status thread is 404, there's no visible github activity for over a year, jQuery version is at 1.7.1 (current is 1.9.1 or 2.0.0), and the forum is dead. My conclusion is that this project is in fact dead too, which is a shame. It looks quite nice, and alternatives to jQuery UI are sorely needed, much as I respect it. – Selfcentered