Some brief thoughts that I would like to share. *A stated goal of our project is to be welcoming to new contributions and contributors.* "We invite newcomers to help improve the code or contribute in other ways. ... Contributions of all sorts are heartily welcomed ... The mission statement allows for a very wide variety of contributions." (https://github.com/sagemath/sage/blob/develop/CONTRIBUTING.md)
To achieve these stated goals, not only do we need to generally ensure an atmosphere in the public forums of our community that is welcoming, but specifically *it matters how we talk about past contributions to the project*. Our CoC offers this insight: "Sage is constantly evolving, and earlier decisions that were made in good faith may sometimes need to be reconsidered. Nonetheless, we should still appreciate the hard work done in the past." (https://github.com/sagemath/sage/blob/develop/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md) I feel that it is necessary to elaborate on this. Our project takes a long-term view on maintenance and contributions. It is, in fact, one of our project's more attractive propositions: "If you are willing to prepare your contribution so it meets our standards for inclusion [and making it ready is often a major investment...], then the project will be taking care of it in the long term, even after you have moved on to other things." For this proposition to work, contributors need to be able to trust that the project does not arbitrarily turn around just a couple a years later and declares the accepted contribution as dispensable, a waste of time, not really part of the project, etc. Our project's inclusive mission also means that *different people contribute to the project with a variety of motivations, constraints, expertise, and priorities.* It is important for everyone to remind themselves, e.g., that even if the time that they can set aside for Sage development may be very scarce, for others, e.g., hobbyists, it might simply not be a relevant constraint. Overall it's best to stay away from attempting to manage other developers' time and focus. (Also recall that in real life, it is supervisors who manage time and assignments of their subordinates...) *The community members who are perceived as part of the Sage project's leadership* have a particular responsibility in this regard. (This is not a "freedom of speech" issue; it is about responsible behavior. Words matter, community matters, leadership matters.) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/sage-devel/1279bc3f-d144-44b2-89aa-88f3c4c9a7e3n%40googlegroups.com.
