Baseflow's Flutter and Dart packages

[rickdijk]

An update on maintenance of Baseflow's Flutter and Dart packages

For the past few years, maintenance of our packages has fallen behind. Issues
have gone without replies, some bugs have stayed open far longer than they
should have, and releases have been slower than the community relying on these
packages deserves. We want to be straight about that rather than let it go
unaddressed.

This did not happen because we stopped caring. Baseflow is a commercial company,
and keeping open source packages this widely used in good shape takes sustained
time that is hard to protect alongside day-to-day client work. Over the past few
years we did not reserve enough of it. That is on us to fix, and it is what we
are now working on.

A lot of production apps depend on packages like cached_network_image,
permission_handler, and geolocator. We take that seriously, and the recent state
of things has not matched it. We want to do better at keeping up with these
packages, and this post is a start.

Here is what we are doing, starting now:

• We are working through open issues and labelling them as we go (confirmed bug,
  needs more information, help wanted, out of scope) so it is clearer where
  things stand. This will take time and we are starting with the packages below,
  so please bear with us as we work through the backlog.
• We are adding a pinned roadmap issue to the packages we are focusing on first:
  what we are working on, what is parked, and what falls outside the current
  scope. The README will show a maintenance status at the top so you can tell at
  a glance whether a package is actively maintained.
• We will try to post short maintenance updates more regularly: what shipped,
  what is next, and what we triaged or closed.

On priorities: we are a small team and cannot move on everything at once. We are
focusing first on cached_network_image and its related packages,
permission_handler, and geolocator, because they are the most widely used and
carry the most impact. The others will get attention in turn. We would rather
tell you honestly where you sit in the queue than promise dates we cannot keep,
so we are not attaching fixed deadlines to individual fixes.

If you want to help, that is genuinely welcome. Look for issues labelled "help
wanted" and "good first issue", and see CONTRIBUTING for how review and releases
work.

Thanks for continuing to build on these packages. We will keep working through
this.