Personally I call a project “discontinued” just when I know certainly that it will no longer receive updates by me in the future. But beware: not necessarily a discontinued project is equivalent to a program that no longer works. Simply, I repeat, it just means that it will no longer receive updates, but until there are no external changes in most cases the program will continue to work smoothly also for years.

A project in general could be discontinued for many reasons, but for me this has happened or will happen mainly for three different reasons:

  1. The website/service to which a project relies has been closed. Obviously in this case the program does not work anymore, because it can not get any response from the websites/services and of course it is impossible for me to get them back working again since I am not the owner of those websites.
    This category includes programs such as MangaRush.com Downloader, MegaSquirrel, FSquirrel, SonicSquirrel, etc…
  2. The console for which I created a project goes out of business or is superseded by newer versions. This is the case of PSP, NDS and Wii and of course of all the programs that I have created for these consoles over the years.
  3. The project requires very frequent updates or an excessive amount of work for an upgrade. Obviously I'm only one and I also have a private life to live. My projects are just a hobby and they are completely free of charge. And precisely for these reasons I can not devote entire days coding and testing.
    Fall into this category projects such as Manny or the Cydia repository for Italian translations.

As already said several times, a discontinued program will no longer receive any updates by me, in any case. So either you continue to use it, if possible, in spite of the bug or you just need to look for other equivalent programs on the web. Of course I ask you to avoid to send me requests for updates or bug reportings for discontinued projects, they will be completely ignored.