As the title says, both the repository and website of ReactDataGrid, an important dependency for our Open Data Editor, have suddenly disappeared—404 errors, DNS not resolving, just gone. Normally, we would create an issue in the repository (which we did), explore alternatives, allocate time and resources, and replace it. However, given the context of The Tech We Want initiative we’re currently running, I’d like to share a few additional thoughts.

Thinking of Open Source as Infrastructure

Interestingly, just a couple of days ago, I watched a conference talk titled Building the Hundred-Year Web Service with htmx by Alexander Petros that explores the analogy between physical infrastructure (bridges) and web pages. Now, this situation feels to me like a bridge in my city has vanished, and here I am in my car, staring at an empty gap, not understanding what happened or how to get to the other side. It feels strange and unexpected, something that shouldn’t happen: how can this bridge that I cross every day not be here anymore? My brain does not compute at the moment.

While I know that dependencies or projects disappearing isn’t the norm, this situation still gives me the unsettling feeling that the open-source ecosystem may not be as stable or reliable as I’d like to believe. I may be overreacting to this one example, but then my thoughts quickly turn to the recent takeover of Advanced Custom Fields and then to the back-and-forth licensing issues with Elasticsearch, and more recently, Redis to put some examples (my overthinking can keep going on).

I don’t have any clear answers or suggestions at this point, but I am left with a sense of unreliability. One lesson for me here is that just because something is open source and hosted on GitHub doesn’t mean it will always be accessible. Is GitHub becoming a critical piece of the internet infrastructure on which the whole ecosystem relies? I’d say yes. But what are the consequences of that? Is it good or bad? Should we be concerned? Should we panic? Should we design a plan B? I don’t think so, but I do think it’s worth discussing or at least writing these questions somewhere.

And what about the Open Data Editor?

Our goal with The Tech We Want is to promote the creation of software that can endure over time. So, having this happen just before an important release is doubly ironic and funny.

That said, due to recent changes in the project’s goals, we were already planning to migrate to a simpler stack with fewer dependencies and less turbulent release cycles (more on this later). The sudden disappearance of one of our core dependencies only reinforces the idea that we should aim to build simpler, less dependent technologies.

Read more

• The Open Data Editor is now ready for the pilot phase
• Are you a developer? Help us test the Open Data Editor!
• Open Data Editor: The tormented journey of an app
• Open Data Editor: 5 tips for building data products that work for people
• Open Data Editor: Meet the team behind the app
• Open Data Editor: What we learned from user research
• Announcement of strategic funding for the Open Data Editor
• Introducing Open Data Editor (beta): Towards a No-Code Data App for Everyone