Re: Stepping down and moving on

[Thomas Morley]

2016-11-09 18:09 GMT+01:00 David Kastrup <address@hidden>:
>
> Hi folks and team,
>
> while I haven't really occupied an official function in LilyPond
> development, it's hard to deny that I have effectively functioned as
> acting chief architect and vetter (with a rather mottled performance).
>
> Partly in connection with a drop of my productivity particularly this
> year, the amount of financial support for my work from members of the
> LilyPond community went down from overall survivable to disastrous.  Of
> course this is bitter for those of you that did contribute in
> significant amounts to my subsistence but I have to be moving on.
>
> I have accepted a full-time development (and team management) position
> with another company.  Due to their project and team expansion plans,
> I will be starting already in December.
>
> This employment is in another city.  I'll be travelling back and forth
> weekly for the foreseeable future.  While I might be working on some
> LilyPond side projects interesting to me occasionally, I will not be
> able to do any serious amound of coordination or other activity
> involving me with LilyPond's community.
>
> As my communication style has proven to be a somewhat mixed blessing for
> the purpose of attracting long-term developers, I expect that this may
> help in the long run for finding a different balance of areas LilyPond
> is getting worked on.
>
> During his tenure as LilyPond leader, Graham has demonstrated that even
> without a central technical lead there is a lot of potential to focus
> the resources of people willing to work on and expand LilyPond and we
> have been continuing to reap the results of his talent for organizing
> people into useful teams even though I have not really figured out how
> to fill gaps in the various teams and tools managing LilyPond's
> infrastructure to offset the "natural" amounts of fluctuation.
>
> I'll try seeing through the release of 2.20 in the little time remaining
> to me both before and after starting my job.  My main worry is the
> current comparative amount of instability with regard to font handling,
> and my main bad taste is that 2.20.1 will not be able to support
> Guile 2: there is no way that anything deserving the label of "stable"
> and including Guile 2 will come about in the rest of my tenure.
>
> There are also several half-completed features that are a nuisance.
> I do not expect to be able to to a significant amount of work on them in
> the foreseeable future.
>
> Once consequence, of course, is that my requirement for funding is over.
> I am greatly thankful to the people who have enabled me to keep working
> on LilyPond as long as I did, but what remains in my bank account, in
> spite of being quite less than what I started with when working on
> LilyPond, is sufficient to tide me over the time to my first paycheck.
>
> So I would ask you to cancel any regular bank payments you might still
> have in place as of December: I don't see that I will have a reasonable
> chance at returning a tangible value for them.
>
> Thanks for making me stay in the pond as long as I did!
>
> --
> David Kastrup

Hi David,

to say "thanks a lot for all your fabulous work" is forsooth not
enough, but I'm not able to express it it in better words.

With deepest respect,
  Harm