My general inclination is to avoid getting involved in discussions of this sort, but in this case, I do think that the views of at least one third party might be helpful.
David Golden <x...@xdg.me> writes: > On Sun, Oct 2, 2016 at 4:31 AM, Peter Rabbitson <ribasu...@cpan.org> wrote: > > I again must stress that there has been a huge 9+ months "discussion > > period" during which nobody (besides mst) came forward expressing > > concerns regarding my plans. > > [...snip...] > > No user or former committer has come forward with anything even > > resembling dissatisfaction since I announced my plans last > > December. > > If by "announcing your plans" means things like [1], it's possible > that you think you have clearly conveyed your plans in a way that > isn't what came across to others. Quoting from that link [1]: > > > In 3 weeks, on Christmas Morning, I will effectively leave CPAN. I will > > transfer my FIRSTCOME permissions to perl developers of my choosing, > > and will relinquish all COMAINTs I hold across PAUSE. > > To me, that sounds like a general departure statement. It doesn't > sounds like a plan for DBIC. It certainly doesn't sound like "I'm > going to freeze DBIC", which from your earlier email [2] was the > first hint I got of an actual plan: > > > I am still planning to remove all co-maint perms and handover the > > first-come to a yet-undisclosed person. Given no clear line of > > succession [...] the only responsible thing to do is to select a > > single spot of responsibility and provide all possible support and > > infrastructure for a proper project-freeze. > > That's not "I'm leaving CPAN and will be letting others take things > forward". That's "I'm kicking out everyone already involved and > freezing the project." > > Has that *specific* plan been previously articulated anywhere? If > so, I missed it in your footnotes. Has it been publicly discussed in > a DBIC or other public forum? If so, please share (or reshare) > links. > > So barring evidence of that discussion anywhere within the DBIC > community, my hypothesis is that this communication gap is behind at > least part of the current disconnect about succession plans. You > said: > > > there has been a huge 9+ months "discussion period" during which > > nobody (besides mst) came forward expressing concerns regarding my > > plans. > > What prompted the current dispute was not any specific plan – it was > the lack of any discussion of specifics. > > You say nobody has come forward to object. Consider that nobody has > come forward in support, either. This is the point at which I feel my input might be valuable, as a user of (and very minor contributor to) DBIC. Peter, I think the work you have been doing on DBIC is excellent. I am not aware of anyone who disagrees with that. When you announced your departure, I was saddened both selfishly (in that I think the DBIC codebase is better for your work) and on your behalf (because this didn't seem to be the outcome you'd hoped for). But I didn't want to risk emotionally pressuring you into changing your mind — any reason someone might have for stopping their involvement with an open-source project is valid for them — so I said nothing. The consequences for DBIC were not clear at that point, but I was confident that, sooner or later, things would work out, even though there might be a period with no person (or team) at the wheel. I have been continually surprised (and selfishly delighted) to see you working on DBIC for the nine months or so following your self-announced leaving date. My reasons for saying nothing (which may in retrospect have been a poor decision) were along the lines of not rocking the boat: since you've clearly been willing and able to do more work than your public plans as of early December 2015 suggested, interrupting you seemed pointless. Nonetheless, that doesn't alter the fact that I *have* had a concern in this period: nobody else has been able to step up and start working on DBIC in earnest. That's because your public position has apparently been that you'll be gone within a matter of weeks, and that you're eager to merely finish off a few outstanding tasks before handing over the keys to the project. How much more concerning, then, to discover in the last few days that you have seen your DBIC-related activities since December as effectively winding up the project, rather than preparing to leave it to others. So please take this as someone who is broadly speaking *on your side* coming forward to object to what looks from the outside like a major change in your plans, and one that doesn't seem likely to lead to the best possible outcome for the many people and companies relying on DBIC. -- Aaron Crane ** http://aaroncrane.co.uk/
