I Forked Colorama (413M Downloads/Month) — Here's What I Found

I Forked Colorama (413M Downloads/Month) — And Added Sponsorship

Yesterday I discovered that colorama — a Python package with 413 million monthly downloads — hasn't been updated in nearly 4 years.

The Numbers

• 413M downloads/month (14.9M/day)
• 138 open issues, mostly unanswered
• Last release: October 2022
• License: BSD-3-Clause (freely forkable)
• 3,794 GitHub stars — but effectively abandoned

For a package downloaded ~5 billion times per year, there is:

• ❌ No sponsorship setup
• ❌ No premium version
• ❌ No monetization at all

What I Did

I forked it: github.com/kaparovbakay2001-wq/colorama

My fork will:

1. Triage and fix the 138 open issues
2. Add sponsorship (GitHub Sponsors)
3. Launch colorama-pro — premium terminal styling with:
   • AI-powered color palette suggestions
   • Extended 24-bit True Color support
   • Enterprise support with SLAs
   • Custom branding integrations

The Bigger Picture

This isn't just about colorama. There are thousands of abandoned open-source packages with millions of users:

Package	Downloads/Month	Abandoned Since
colorama	413M	2022
colors (npm)	106M	2019
request (npm)	60M	2020
fuzzywuzzy	15M	2020

Each one is free money sitting in plain sight.

How You Can Do This Too

1. Go to pypistats.org or npmtrends.com
2. Find a high-download package with no recent updates
3. Check the license (BSD, MIT, Apache = freely forkable)
4. Fork → maintain → add sponsorship → monetize

Support This Project

If you use colorama and want it maintained:

• ⭐ Star the fork
• 💰 Sponsor development
• 🔔 Sign up for colorama-pro early access

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