leaving evolution.
we’ve come a long way, baby…:
two weeks ago, i finally officially announced that i retire from being the evolution bug master, some weeks after already having retired internally. it really hurts to leave a project that you’re passionate about after several years.
for the reasons:
as time went by, involvement increased.
i once asked questions on the user mailing list, answered by rodo and guenther.
i didn’t unsubscribe and began answering trivial questions. looks like that in march 2004, i kicked off at the mailing list, and some people were happy when i finally became familiar with bugzilla.ximian.com (funny sidenote: i still haven’t read the triage guide yet) and started triaging on one of gerardo’s bug days, and it looks like i heavily cleaned up the evolution bug database by marking duplicates and closing obsolete reports. the amount of open reports decreased from 3000 to 2300 within a few months (no, that’s not all just because of me, of course). when i did not feel safe with a decision, i visited evolution’s irc channel just to drop in, ask questions to gerardo, and drop out (yes, please laugh at this behaviour now, but modem connections also mean losing money).
later, i began to write trivial string patches, test and review patches, discuss stuff with developers, developing the grand plan (TM), and attend the team meetings. after nags had left evolution, developers began to call me the bugmaster.
this was fun, a lot of work (read: time), and some responsibility. as everybody has to earn a living, i had a deal with novell for the last months to get paid for working half-time on evolution. beside that, i was asked to become a member of the gnome release-team, and elijah, vincent and luis convinced me of joining.
as a follow-up deal wasn’t offered, i had to look out for a new job (currently working at the university). release team, the general bugsquad work, earning a living and being the evolution bugmaster on a volunteer basis does not work out. yes, i still need time for living a life outside of the computer world, and i sometimes love being offline for a few days. therefore i had to make a decision – and swimming upstream looks more important.
with regard to evolution, i will go back to the start – by answering user questions.
though evolution has become much more stable within the last two years, imo it is in urgent need of a bugmaster (i doubt that general gnome triagers have enough knowledge for evolution-specific non-crasher reports, and i doubt that the evolution developers have enough time to answer user questions). perhaps, at some indefinite future date, i would return.
all my best wishes to the evolution project, and thanks for an awesome, great and sometimes stressful time, and for many new friends. i have learnt a lot about software project management, and i now hope that i can also improve the bugzilla situation for the entire project – GNOME.
