To be honest, I was a bit taken by surprise at the intensity of the discussions regarding this topic. I was expecting that we could all agree on some basic criteria, publish a simple statement to that effect on jenkins.io, and refer to that policy as necessary while doing work on new features or dependency management. I did not have it in my mind to write any automation, let alone to introduce "a concept of […] company/team owner so that we could distinguish plugins maintained by company contributors and contact companies instead of individuals who might have left their employer via inactive emails" (which was explicitly stated as a prerequisite to adopting a plugin EOL policy). All of this sounds like a large amount of bureaucratic work, and as a volunteer I have neither the time nor the interest in pursuing matters of corporate governance. Moreover, I consider it unlikely that such an approach would be practical.
As a tech lead, I know that making one large and complex deliverable depend on another large and complex deliverable is likely to result in delivering neither. My experience is that an incremental approach works better. My suggestion to the Jenkins community is to focus on identifying incremental steps to improve the status quo without getting sidetracked with large and complex deliverables (and correspondingly lengthy debates). As Bryan Cantrill writes: "When faced with a decision, determine if there are elements that are common to both paths, and implement them first, thereby deferring the decision." One example of such an incremental step forward was my recent PR to deprecate a handful of older plugins. The more incremental steps like this we take, the clearer the target becomes. The target might seem blurry and distant at the beginning, but after enough steady progress it will come into focus. When that delightful moment occurs, debate will be pointless since we will be more excited about racing to the finish line, together. To the extent that I can identify incremental steps forward, I will continue to propose them. I believe this is an important challenge for the Jenkins project, and I want to be a part of the solution. I will continue to try and help where I can, as my time allows. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Jenkins Developers" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/jenkinsci-dev/CAFwNDjo-f0AnZdNfjRQ04aGP6km4JjbOGrd5Tvh-btRXe0oXHQ%40mail.gmail.com.
