Google appears to have abandoned yet another project, with the open-source Fastlane app automation tool the latest in a long list.
Fastlane is an automation tool for building and releasing iOS and Android apps. Google acquired the company in early 2017 and supported its continued development for several years.
Peter Steinberger, PSPDFKit founder, noted on Mastodon that the Fastlane project no longer has any active maintainers on GitHub:
Good luck. Google abandoned Fastlane, it has no maintainers currently.
RT @testableapple Ridiculous and long-lived nightmare. CI is especially scared.
@FastlaneTools, what if I say this tiny PR might mitigate this issue?”
Josh Holtz, Fastlane’s lead maintainer, chimed in, saying that he was still involved but had been struggling with his schedule to find time for the project:
@jesusfdiaz @steipete Still working on it! Just been struggling schedule wise with a new addition to the family in October 🤷♂️
But almost back to a new normal over here which should make things easier
In response to a question about Google no longer sponsoring the project, Holtz confirmed that has been the case for more than a year:
@steipete @jesusfdiaz This is facts ☺️ Have not been paid/sponsored since November-ish of 2021
Holtz said Google still owns the copyright for Fastlane, but is not contributing anything toward its development, making the project a labor of love:
@leohidalgo Yup, Google owns the IP… the community just does all (majority) the work these days 🤷♂️
Edit: I think I meant copyright instead of IP but… hello Hackernews 👋
Google has a long history of abandoning projects after they gain traction. In fact, the company has such a notorious reputation for doing so that it had to reassure cloud customers that they could, in fact, depend on the company long-term.
It’s a shame to see Fastlane join the list of Google abandonware.