Display plinths and vitrines in a quiet exhibition wing by a window onto a snowy lake

3Floor · Perpetual Exhibits

Perpetual Exhibits

Work outlives plans. An exhibit keeps a project or a life of work on show: what it is, why it mattered, who carries it on. The notes for whoever takes over sit one layer deeper, behind your warden.

On display

Exhibits.

E-000001 · Perpetual Exhibit · Example

Island Ferry Timetable

A small open-source app written for one island, used every day since 2014.

What an exhibit holds

Three layers, your choice in each.

Public: The story, the works, the links, who looks after it now.
Recognised: A letter to whoever carries it on, the roadmap you never published, where the domain and the servers are and who to ask, a successor badge.
Sealed: Anything that needs your keepers: kept offline, opened together.

FRONT DESK

Apply for an exhibit

Fill in the public part, write what you leave for the right people, set your warden questions. Your browser locks the deeper layer before anything is sent; we never see it.

Go to the front desk

Project cards

Listed projects.

P-000001

Cold Library

WhatThe open format, offline tools and website of this library.

Kept byLibrarian No. 1

Handovernotes

Since2026-10-04

Active

The Long Shelf

Works that are still looked after.

Each of these lost a founder or a core maker, and someone carried on. This is what an exhibit is for. Facts checked on 2026-10-04, each with a source.

1994

NetHackIzchak Miller, founding member of the DevTeam

The NetHack DevTeam still ships releases; 5.0 came out in 2026.

Source

2012

Alpine (Pine)Mark Crispin, an original author, also the author of IMAP

Maintained by Eduardo Chappa, with commits in 2026.

Source

2014

RakeJim Weirich, who created it

Maintained by Hiroshi Shibata; v13.4.2 released in April 2026.

Source

2015

DebianIan Murdock, who founded it in 1993

Thousands of volunteers and a release team keep it going.

Source

2016

ZeroMQPieter Hintjens, who founded the project

An open team still merges fixes and security patches.

Source

2019

Erlang/OTPJoe Armstrong, co-inventor of Erlang

The Erlang/OTP team at Ericsson; OTP 29.1 shipped in September 2026.

Source

2020

Boost C++Beman Dawes, co-founder

Library authors and the community; releases continue.

Source

2021

JRoger Hui, who designed it with Ken Iverson

Jsoftware and its contributors, with commits in 2026.

Source

2023

VimBram Moolenaar, its creator and long-time lead

Christian Brabandt and the Vim team; patches land almost daily.

Source

ONE SETTING, FIVE MINUTES

Name a GitHub successor.

Settings → Account → Successor settings. If you can no longer manage your account, your successor can archive or transfer your public repositories after GitHub checks the situation. They cannot log in as you and do not get your private repositories. Put the rest in your exhibit. GitHub docs