Original post: https://windsys.win/blog/03-talk/

It came out of nowhere. Not that I can't accept it—it's more that feeling of finding out something I rely on has stopped being updated, right when I actually need it (same thing happened with LSPosed back then).

I left a comment without really knowing what I was feeling, and only noticed after posting that I'd made a typo

How I Came Across Windsys Project

Stumbled on it by accident, and honestly fell in love with it at first sight.

Back then I was really into exchanging friend links. I spotted Windsys Project on jipa233's link page. At the time my computer (MACHENIKE T58-V) was still on Windows 10, and I needed to upgrade to Windows 11 but didn't really want to use the official package (it's just... yeah). So I gave it a shot, found it worked really well, and I've been using it ever since.

My Thoughts

Honestly, reading that, it suddenly hit me that I really should list out the projects I use and put them in a table or something to give credit (even though I'm not using them commercially). Not that anyone's said it's wrong of me not to list them.

Is mandatory attribution even feasible? Seems pretty unlikely. How would you even decide what to credit, and how would you verify it? Those feel like pretty hard problems to me.

In the domestic environment, mandatory attribution could be solved with real-name verification. But once you get to overseas platforms, it's hard to confirm—especially for someone like me who has multiple identities for various reasons (see my about page for details). It gets even harder to verify (though barring any surprises, I rarely use two names on the same platform).

Going back to "once the half-finished code goes open source, some people will try to take credit for it"—if the README lists the sources and the open-source license is followed, it should probably be fine. But domestically, very few people think to do that. More often, it's the Powered by xxx shown while the project is running that serves as the reminder (like the Powered by Mix Space&Shiro at the bottom of the main site, or the 由 xlog 提供支持 on the sub-site). I even forget about this myself—only recently started to remember.

Afterword

Since Windsys Project's related projects have stopped updating and won't be open-sourced, there's not much more to say. A quiet thank-you is worth more than anything.

From my personal perspective, when I see a GitHub repo I'm happy with, I'll give it a star, or submit an issue or PR to help the project grow. That's also a way to support the author.