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Totally agree. Akka was a huge selling point for Scala. It's a huge loss for the ecosystem. Akka isn't "just" a library, it's a programming model. A lot of software is built around that model and it's going to be a painful effort to get rid of it. It made itself irreplaceable and now they're pulling the plug.

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There will just be a fork under a different name, starting from the last freely-licensed version. Right to fork is integral to FLOSS, specifically to protect against the whole "suppliers take the ball and go home" scenario.

Who will maintain it though? It's true that Lightbend is doing almost all of the development. There is no one else who knows the code base and no one willing to learn it, since Akka is pretty uncool nowadays.

Also, Akka is rare technology -- there aren't many well functioning actors and transactional memory implementations in the world. The number of people who can continue maintaining this, is small, and such people are mostly making lots of money doing other things already, I'd think.

GP zozbot234, I'm guessing an OSS fork will go mostly unmaintained or start to source code rot, even if "maintained".

It isn't lost though is it? Just slightly delayed. Honestly this seems like the lightest possible "our developers need to eat" solution out there. More relaxed than GPL or AGPL or open core. If you're against this then honestly I think you're an unrealistic radical who can be safely ignored.

You're right, my statement came from a lot of frustration. I still think it's a hit for the Scala ecosystem.

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