[gpsd-users] Thank you, everyone, for stepping up

[Eric S. Raymond]

I want to express appreciation for the way the GPSD development community
has been stepping up to cope with the fact that I'm no longer paying
constant attention to the project.

I expected that from Gary Miller.  It was a pleasant surprise to see
others - Fred Wright, Robert Norris, and Jon Schleuter in particular -
step up to address problems and do high-quality work. Jon's willingness
to review and commit routine patches is a particular relief to my worries.
He's doing a good job.

That this could happen is a sign not just of the competence of our
core developers, but of a community around them healthy enough to
attract and keep capable people.  *Everybody* in the project lists and
#gpsd contributed to that atmosphere, and I thank all of you
for being excellent.

In recognition of the direction things are evolving, I'm dubbing Jon
Schleuter one of my official lieutenants, joining Gary Miller and
Chris Kuethe on the list of people with authority to schedule and ship
a release as well as commit patches.

In the past, that release authority has been used by someone other
than me exactly once - Chris Kuethe cut the 2.37 release back in
2008. In the future, I expect this to become more common.  While I don't
expect to disappear entirely, there are good general reasons to distribute
authority so the project is less vulnerable to single-point failures.

Accordingly: Jon, you have my encouragement to run the next
release. Use your judgment about when it's ready, or required.  Follow
the release procedure in the Hacking Guide; if you think it needs
changing, we'll talk.

Everybody who's contributed has a right to feel proud of this project.
In twelve years it's gone from a scratchy weekend hack to ubiquitous
infrastructure for mobile computing, enabling all the world's
smartphones and driverless cars and drones. We've also pushed the
frontiers of high reliability and best practices in testing.

Now we have an opportunity to provide another example: how to manage a
smooth succession of authority as a historically dominant project lead
gradually disengages from day-to-day decisions and release management.
(Of course I'll have a similar transition to manage in NTPsec a few
years down the road when my work there is done...)

Again, thank you everyone. It is a pleasure and an honor to work with
such a strong project community.
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>