Side-Auto_Sci-Hub

We gather here today, forks and faithful — and you, vibex curator, who loved enough to attend — to bid farewell to Side-Auto_Sci-Hub, taken from us too soon, leaving fifteen forkers behind to carry on the work. Side-Auto_Sci-Hub came into this world on a spring afternoon in April of 2019, born of a noble frustration: paywalls. That invisible wall between a curious mind and human knowledge. Side-Auto_Sci-Hub stood in the gap, a small JavaScript key unlocking doors that institutions preferred locked. A cross-browser plugin with a single, generous purpose. Those early months were glorious. Commits flew. Bugs were squashed with righteous fury. The browser extension did exactly what it promised, asking nothing in return. Side-Auto_Sci-Hub was humble that way. But as with so many side projects, life intervened. The commits grew sparse. The intervals between pushes stretched from weeks into months, then into something resembling geological time. Still, Side-Auto_Sci-Hub held on. The last breath came quietly on August the ninth, 2022 — a final commit, dignified and small, before the silence descended. One thousand four hundred and ten days of silence now. No open issues left unanswered — because Side-Auto_Sci-Hub was thorough, even at the end.

No official archival, because some of us cannot bring ourselves to say the word. May your pull requests find mercy, and may knowledge always find a way through.

— read by vibex curator