[GOP2-0] why are we losing developers? a pseudo-anonymous survey

[Graham Percival]

I've taken the unusual step of CCing lilypond developers directly
instead of merely sending this to -devel.  If you consider
yourself an "ex-lilypond developer", please read.


LOSS OF DEVELOPERS

We've lost a number of developers over the years due to policies
or personalities -- some publicly, others privately.  I'd like to
gather a list of problematic reasons[1] why people left or lost
motivation to work on lilypond.

[1] "good reasons" are things like spending more time with family
(particularly getting married or having a child), new job, or
changing interests and hobbies.  "Problematic reasons" are things
like mailing list arguments, annoyance with patch-handling
bureaucracy, lack of respect, etc.

I'm aware of the circumstances of some of the losses, but I think
it's important to gather as full a picture as we can, without
compromising anybody's privacy.  I'm therefore asking all
"ex-developers" to send a pseudo-anonymous response.


PSEUDO-ANONYMOUS RESPONSES

I've asked
  Colin Hall <address@hidden>
to accept emails for a period of a week, from June 13 to June 20.
He will:
- remove the headers from the emails (mainly to remove email
  addresses, time/date, and server information)
- assign a name to each response (developer A, developer B, etc) in
  random order
- send the result to the public lilypond-devel mailing list.

I chose to ask Colin Hall because he's a relative newcomer (and
thus is not likely to be involved in any arguments which caused
people to leave), but also because he's doing a fantastic job as
the new Bug Meister and his GUB investigations with well-organized
diaries.

In some cases, readers familiar with lilypond development will be
able to guess the identities of people sending responses based on
the circumstances described or simply from writing style.  The
only response I can think of is to ask everybody to refrain from
doing that, or at the very least to not make any public guesses.
The discussion of these stories should always refer to the names
Colin assigned them (developer A, developer B, etc).

Don't go overboard when trying to make the stories anonymous,
though.  I mean, if somebody writes "I was asked to do something
by the project manager, then a day later I was asked to do it a
different way, then another day later I was told not to bother",
it's pretty obvious that the story is talking about me.  That's
fine; when discussing or referring to the stories, we will try to
be "willfully ignorant" and pretend that we don't know who the
"project manager" was.  Because the point of this isn't to point
blame at individuals; it's to see if we can make the lilypond
developer community a better place for developers.


DEVELOPERS ONLY

For this survey, I'm asking that only lilypond developers (people
with git push ability) respond.  There are many problems faced by
potential developers and casual contributors, and we will
investigate those in a few weeks.  But right now, I would like a
set of pseudo-anonymous replies which we know come from existing
developers.

Let's fix the "truly horrendous" problem (experienced developers
being driven away) before attempting to solve the "merely
terrible" problem (turning away potential developers).


QUESTION

If you were a lilypond developer at any point in time, was your
motivation to work on lilypond reduced due to "problematic
reasons" which you are comfortable sharing with us in this
pseudo-anonymous fashion?  What were those reasons or the
circumstances?

If in doubt about what is "problematic", please side with
"complaining" rather than being silent.  If you think a policy
harmed your motivation, talk about it even if you think there's a
good reason for the policy -- sometimes "the cure is worse than
the disease" and we should re-evaluate those policies.  If you
think a specific person harmed your motivation... well, let's try
not to name individuals, but if you can describe in general terms
how many people were involved and how their behaviour was
problematic, we could investigate the recommendations for civility
and codes of conduct for open-source projects and forums. 


NO INVALID FEELINGS

At the risk of seeming too "touch-feely", I want to remind us that
when writing or reading these responses, recall that there is no
such thing as an invalid feeling.  If somebody writes "I feel that
I am not respected", then that is simply a fact (unless they are
willfully lying, but since the responses only come from
experienced developers we can discard that possibility).  The
statement "I _am_ not respected" might be open to debate, but the
statement "I _feel_ that I am not respected" is simply a fact.
Some members of open-source communities tend to argue a great
deal, but the responses to this survey are _not_ open to debate.
They are simply facts, which will inform future debates about
policy changes.

- Graham