4 ms·

Cool. Unfortunately I couldn't help noticing however that when the maintainer announced that he is about to stop working on the project, he ignored all questio

Cool. Unfortunately I couldn't help noticing however that when the maintainer announced that he is about to stop working on the project, he ignored all questions and requests about transferring the maintenance duties to someone else. Somehow I feel the project was held as a hostage, waiting for a ransom (which was paid eventually).

SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
Couldn’t said requestors to transfer maintenance have forked it? What would preclude that?
- not_your_vase 2y ago
  What would preclude one from forking the kernel source, maintaining the man-pages separately, and expecting it to reach a similar adoption as the mainline? Common sense.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
    Interesting - why would you have to fork the kernel source here? Why couldn’t you just fork the man pages only, demonstrate to the kernel maintainers the man pages project is essentially unmaintained, then ask the kernel maintainers to make your fork the source of truth? I would think if the man pages project is actually unmaintained this would not be a problem.
chipdart 2y ago
> Somehow I feel the project was held as a hostage, waiting for a ransom (which was paid eventually). This situation only happens when you hand the responsibility of managing a critical domain to a single person, and you forget about it for ages. This is hardly a "hostage" situation, specially when the reason flagged is lack of support. I mean, this scenario only happens due to lack of support to begin with.
- not_your_vase 2y ago
  Well, that's definitely a valid point of view. But in my opinion if you want to earn money, then you should look for some sort of employment, and not be a volunteer in a project that's very famous about being built by volunteers, and demand to be paid (or else). If you don't want to be an unpaid volunteer anymore (which is a very fair thing to do), there are much more graceful ways to achieve that.
  - homarp 2y ago
    in the comment of the article, he wrote 'Actually, I had added a sentence in my email signatures for almost a year: ``` -- <https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/ https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/> Looking for a remote C programming job at the moment. ``` (e.g.: <https://lore.kernel.org/linux-man/ZgifHQoTaDEiga0W@debian... https://lore.kernel.org/linux-man/ZgifHQoTaDEiga0W@debian...>) ' does that qualify as 'looking for some sort of employment' ?
    - not_your_vase 2y ago
      > A: Hey man, how is it going? > B: Not good, have been without a job for over a year :( > A: Aww... what happened? Did recruiters stop using LinkedIn? Or you made your profile private? > B: Nah, I have no LinkedIn profile... > A: Gotcha, M$ is a pest. The how many CVs have you sent? > B: 0. I don't believe in that. > A: Then what did you do? Did you try to look for a job at all? > B: Of course! I put a new signature in my emails. And then I barely sent an email to anyone. > A: That's 1 sentence, with a dead link. > B: That's what I'm talking about, exactly. Even with the dead link, I still can't find any jobs... What do you say? Does that qualify as 'looking for some sort of employment'?
      - homarp 2y ago
        Sorry, I am missing context. Where does that come from?
        2y ago
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
shkkmo 2y ago
> Instead of stopping maintenance looking for a sponsor, wouldn't be better to hand it off to other contributors that have already established some trust? Some people may have more time available to be active maintainers. I see activity from other contributors in the git history of the project. Is responded to with: > Such contributors almost certainly don't exist. "Activity" from other contibutors != someone who has the time, energy, and ability to be a potential maintainer. In more than 15 years of maintaining the project, Alex was the only person that appeared who could seriously take over the maintainership. He's done a great job, but there's only so much a volunteer can do. There is nothing being "held hostage". Expecting a volunteer to train new contributors while still managing the project is unrealistic. It is unlikely that any of these new volunteers will step into his role for free. Thus the realistic options were to let the project die and other orgs take on the works themselves, or fund the guy who has been doing the work for free for 15 years. People values the project enough to do the later.
- mofosyne 2y ago
  Yeah the principal here is mutual aid not charity
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
Why is it his problem what you all do afterwards?

SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago

Couldn’t said requestors to transfer maintenance have forked it? What would preclude that?

not_your_vase 2y ago
What would preclude one from forking the kernel source, maintaining the man-pages separately, and expecting it to reach a similar adoption as the mainline? Common sense.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
  Interesting - why would you have to fork the kernel source here? Why couldn’t you just fork the man pages only, demonstrate to the kernel maintainers the man pages project is essentially unmaintained, then ask the kernel maintainers to make your fork the source of truth? I would think if the man pages project is actually unmaintained this would not be a problem.

chipdart 2y ago

> Somehow I feel the project was held as a hostage, waiting for a ransom (which was paid eventually). This situation only happens when you hand the responsibility of managing a critical domain to a single person, and you forget about it for ages. This is hardly a "hostage" situation, specially when the reason flagged is lack of support. I mean, this scenario only happens due to lack of support to begin with.

not_your_vase 2y ago
Well, that's definitely a valid point of view. But in my opinion if you want to earn money, then you should look for some sort of employment, and not be a volunteer in a project that's very famous about being built by volunteers, and demand to be paid (or else). If you don't want to be an unpaid volunteer anymore (which is a very fair thing to do), there are much more graceful ways to achieve that.
- homarp 2y ago
  in the comment of the article, he wrote 'Actually, I had added a sentence in my email signatures for almost a year: ``` -- <https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/ https://www.alejandro-colomar.es/> Looking for a remote C programming job at the moment. ``` (e.g.: <https://lore.kernel.org/linux-man/ZgifHQoTaDEiga0W@debian... https://lore.kernel.org/linux-man/ZgifHQoTaDEiga0W@debian...>) ' does that qualify as 'looking for some sort of employment' ?
  - not_your_vase 2y ago
    > A: Hey man, how is it going? > B: Not good, have been without a job for over a year :( > A: Aww... what happened? Did recruiters stop using LinkedIn? Or you made your profile private? > B: Nah, I have no LinkedIn profile... > A: Gotcha, M$ is a pest. The how many CVs have you sent? > B: 0. I don't believe in that. > A: Then what did you do? Did you try to look for a job at all? > B: Of course! I put a new signature in my emails. And then I barely sent an email to anyone. > A: That's 1 sentence, with a dead link. > B: That's what I'm talking about, exactly. Even with the dead link, I still can't find any jobs... What do you say? Does that qualify as 'looking for some sort of employment'?
    - homarp 2y ago
      Sorry, I am missing context. Where does that come from?
      - 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

shkkmo 2y ago

> Instead of stopping maintenance looking for a sponsor, wouldn't be better to hand it off to other contributors that have already established some trust? Some people may have more time available to be active maintainers. I see activity from other contributors in the git history of the project. Is responded to with: > Such contributors almost certainly don't exist. "Activity" from other contibutors != someone who has the time, energy, and ability to be a potential maintainer. In more than 15 years of maintaining the project, Alex was the only person that appeared who could seriously take over the maintainership. He's done a great job, but there's only so much a volunteer can do. There is nothing being "held hostage". Expecting a volunteer to train new contributors while still managing the project is unrealistic. It is unlikely that any of these new volunteers will step into his role for free. Thus the realistic options were to let the project die and other orgs take on the works themselves, or fund the guy who has been doing the work for free for 15 years. People values the project enough to do the later.

mofosyne 2y ago
Yeah the principal here is mutual aid not charity

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

Why is it his problem what you all do afterwards?