Hi James, I hope that your current guilt-o-meter status will allow you to sympathise with your fellow developers and their current feelings, because I wouldn't enjoy an e-mail like this one either. It has come to a point where quite a few people I like and respect are considering leaving the project out of frustration (not even counting those who already did). They are not even trying to make a point, or threatening to quit: no, they just have had enough and they know it will be better for their personal health. You know as well as everyone else that you are slow in doing things and that you work in burst mode. But whatever the reasons or excuses can be, it hurts us badly, yet for the last five years (at least) there has been no real sign of improvement, and that's the nicest euphemism I can find. So, after having spent years wondering who you trusted enough to help you into what you were doing, and today obviously failing to make things better on your own, I urge you to let go the burden. You do not believe in buildd co-maintenance? Fine, can't blame you. But leave your buildds to people who do. You don't have time to create accounts? Leave it to people who do. Leave the keyring to someone else, really! Someone who doesn't need 2 damn years to upload a new keyring package. If you are waiting for elmo-alikes to pop up from nowhere, just forget about it, there aren't enough of them in this world. Please find *one* thing you still enjoy in Debian, forget about the rest, and do that thing, but do it *often*, at a pace that satisfies people and does not cause our frustrated developers to join other projects. Because today, it is as if the project had outsourced its IT management to you, an external, hardly reliable contractor: when was the last time you took part in a mailing-list discussion? Don't you feel more and more a stranger to the new, young developers who still strugglingly manage to attain developer status these days? It's sad, because you are obviously trying to make things better (the RT system is great, allowing Peter to join DSA was nice) but they're drops in the ocean. Honestly, a crucial question is now this one: Does the project still trust you? I know that forcibly removing any task from you will make you very upset, and might cause you to stop any Debian activity for some time as it already happened, or even leave the project, maybe taking a few followers with you. Will the project be hurt? Certainly. Badly. But for a few months, and then everything will be a lot, lot better. And since the beginning of my term, the most hints have been that this was the only reasonable thing to do. So, please let me know whether we'll have to fight, or if a few things can still go smoothly. This is certainly no longer something about which I can afford to wait 2 months between each answer from you. Regards, -- Sam.
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