The pace of discovering lost apps has slowed to a crawl, and I haven't had time to do much new development for the past couple years -- and likely won't in the future. While I'll keep existing stuff going in "maintenance mode" as long as possible, I will be making a few changes to help with long-term stability and sustainability. Here's a summary of what's been discussed on Discord…
- 11 historical apps and alternate versions were recovered during 2024. They have been added to the App Museum -- the changelog is here.
- Mirrors for the App Museum will no longer be linked-to or updated. I'm working with Archive.org to keep everything backed-up there, and will be hosting the Museum content in Azure storage.
- The business entity I created to take donations and fund the services means extra complexity at tax time -- for very little money. My "day job" business entity, on the other hand, is doing quite well -- so well, in fact, that I can afford to absorb wOSA hosting needs into that business. I'll be dissolving the smaller entity at the end of this year, and cancelling donations (with much thanks to those who have supported for the past few years!) No new donations will be accepted in 2025.
- A portion of existing funds will be donated to archive.org and the Child's Play charity, the rest will be invoiced by the other business as a one-time payment to defray costs for a couple months. A final accounting will be provided in Discord in December, when all the transactions settle.
- The supplier I was buying Touchpads from in bulk seems to have run out. A few Touchpads remain in inventory, so grab them while you can. Unless a new supply is found, I'll shut down the shop. Of course, wOSA will still be around to support anyone who acquires webOS devices by other means.
- webOS apps converted to Android and listed in the Play Store for a fee will be switched to free -- if you want to support us that way, buy our apps soon!
- A couple of the web front-ends, including the main home page and the Museum got long overdue facelifts. Of course, all the pages are still webOS friendly, but now they hopefully look a little more modern!
- 2025 will be the last year of full operation for Share Space. Around this time next year, it will switch to read-only mode. At some future date, it will be shut off entirely. You can always self-host the service for free, forever.
- I will no longer be posting to Twitter/X. When there's news, I'll post on Bluesky and in the Fediverse, which you can also follow vss RSS. Links are here: https://www.webosarchive.org/news/
- The Discord server has been invite-only since late this summer, due to rash of raids we had to live through. I will not be changing it back to public, but people can request an invite to our Discord here.
- The old domain (webosarchive.com) expires in September of 2025 and will not be renewed. Please make sure you're linking to webosarchive.org
- At some point in the future, the Proxy will have to be shut down. As of the end of 2024, no new proxy users will be added, but I'll keep it running for existing users until at least 2026. If you need a proxy, now might be a good time to buy yourself a Raspberry Pi and learn to host your own proxy!
Again, thank you to all who have supported webOS Archive! Although there's lots of changes here, this isn't a good-bye -- I plan to keep the website, Museum, and some core services up for many years. When/if things change, don't forget that everything we've built is open source and can easily be hosted yourself!
webOS Forever!
