[Chicken-users] passing on of chicken maintainership

[felix winkelmann]

Dear chicken users and hackers,


I have decided to quit being chief maintainer of this project. Various
developments have lead to this step which I don't take lightheartedly.

This project takes too much of my time. I know that I'm basically
responsible for this myself, but maintaining the compiler, core libraries,
many extensions, build system, documentation and evangelizing has a
substantial impact on my work and private life. My head is spinning with
all the little technical details and it is becoming increasingly hard for me
to just sit down and *not* think of anything but chicken and scheme
implementation issues.

Another reason is that I am slowly losing my touch to the code base.
Chicken more or less represents the Scheme implementation I would like
to have, but users demand different things and co-developers sometimes
have different goals and that is quite all right. Since this isn't a one man
project anymore I have to decide whether I continue trying to
have control over every little issue or whether I just let go. I'll do
the latter.

I appreciate the help I have received by all who contributed over the
years. I'm particularly grateful to those who have taken their share
in the work.

I will be available for giving advice (should it be needed) and to fix
the hard-to-find bugs (when I feel like it and find the time). I will try to do
minimal maintenance for eggs I've authored but not at the pace I used
to. I'm still following the users and hackers mailing lists and will
try to assist in organizing the transition to a cooperative maintenance
model (or whatever will come out of this).

I would also like to emphasize that this is purely a personal
decision: I appreciate everybody who is or has been involved in this
project. I thank you for everything you have taught me and for all the good
vibes that have been coming from hacking together.

I want once again to ask for help and implore any CHICKEN users
interested to join taking part in the maintenance jobs that make
this Scheme system more fun to use.

Here is how you can help:

* Subscribe to the "chicken-janitors" mailing list and help keeping
  the automated egg building process working, and be up to date
  about bugs reported by the trac system.

* Help doing release management and testing of the trunk

* Become a moderator of one of the chicken-related mailing lists

* Update the wiki, fix errors and add example code.

* Write eggs!

* Follow the mailing lists and give advice to new users.

* Report bugs.


Thanks, everybody and good luck.


cheers,
felix