In line with the previously announced plan, on December 15, GitHub ended support for the Atom code editor and moved the project repository to read-only archive mode. Instead of Atom, GitHub turned its attention to the Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS Code) editor, which was created at one time as an add-on to Atom.
The Atom editor code is distributed under the MIT license, and a fork of the Atom Community (GitHub) was founded a few years before the folding of Atom, aimed at providing alternative builds formed by an independent community and including additional components for building an integrated development environment. After the collapse of the main project, some independent developers joined the work on Atom Community, but the conservative goals and development model of this product did not suit everyone.
The result was the creation of another fork - Pulsar (GitHub), which included some of the founders of the Atom Community. The new fork has set itself the goal of not only providing an editor that mimics the functionality of Atom, but also to update the architecture and promote significant new features, such as a new API for interacting with the server and support for smart search.
Another fundamental difference between Pulsar and Atom Community was a different policy for accepting changes and the intention to minimize the barrier for new developers to enter the project and simplify the promotion of innovations (anyone has the opportunity to suggest an improvement that he considers necessary). When making important decisions in the Pulsar community, it is proposed to use a general vote in which everyone can take part. When accepting minor improvements, it is proposed to use feedback based on the discussion and review of pull requests, in which everyone can also participate.
On the day Atom support ended, the first test release of Pulsar was published, in which, in addition to rebranding, the backend was replaced to work with the extension repository - the proprietary Package Backend was replaced with an open analogue, and the existing packages were ported and transferred to the Pulsar Package Repository. The new version also provides support for installing add-on packages from Git, updated the Electron 12 platform and the Node.js 14 framework, removed obsolete experimental features and telemetry collection code, and added builds for the ARM architecture for Linux and macOS.
Source: opennet.ru