Hello Graham, Many thanks for the amazing amount of energy and work you've put in over the years. You certainly brought a very new style of leadership to the project after I have left. I hope we can count on you to stick around to give comments in the role of experienced emeritus.
On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 9:01 AM, Graham Percival <[email protected]> wrote: > I guess it's time to make it official: I'm stepping down as > project manager. I'll stick around for a while to review patches > on countdowns and participate in policy discussions, but don't be > surprised if I'm gone for good in a few months. > > It's been quite a ride for the past 9 or 10 years (depending on > which cvs commit is deemed to be my first contribution). I've > gone from making trivial typo corrections, to organizing a > directory of snippets, to reorganizing the whole documentation, to > recruiting+training 20 doc editors over a single year, to building > the binaries, and finally to trying to organize the team of > developers. Over that time I've studied or worked at 5 different > university on 3 continents. But nothing lasts forever; the time > has come to leave. > > For most of 2012 I haven't been doing much with LilyPond, and in > the past few weeks I've been doing even less -- but I find that I > don't miss it. I've made some good friends while working on > LilyPond, and Waltrop was great. I was really fired up about > LilyPond when I left. But sadly the warm feelings from that > meeting vanished rather quickly, and I was left feeling even more > jaded than I had earlier in the year. > > Ultimately, I haven't used lilypond for my own music since 2004. > I was hoping that I could get fired up about my old pieces if I > could create a final version with a nice stable syntax, but that > hasn't happened. After I'm finished my phd, I'll do the thing > which every computer science student should do at least once in > their life: I'll make my own language. I'm not comfortable with > the level of abstractions that lilypond offers. Just like > different programming languages make it easier (or harder) to > write certain types of programs, a different sheet music language > would make it easier to express the type of music that I write. > I'll write a python script which transforms a text file into a .ly > file. There's a number of things which can be done with text > manipulation which will allow me to write music in a simpler > fashion. I'll make the resulting script available under a Free > license, of course, but the most important thing is that I'll be > "scratching an itch" as the saying goes. > > Other than that, I'll be spending my time on other volunteer > projects, either in the audio domain or scientific computing such > as scipy or eigen. I think it would be good to challenge myself > with some hardcore DSP or numerical software programming, as both > areas tie directly to my probable research or job work. > > > So what's next for lilypond? There's no immediate rush to change > things. At some point somebody should clone the github lilypond > repositories, but that's not a big deal. There's a mountain of > miscellaneous tasks that I do and can't remember, so I guess that > over the next few months I'll send emails to -devel whenever I > discover something that needs to be done. I don't mind passing on > advice or whatever I can remember to people taking on those tasks. > The most immediate issue is building releases, but Phil's doing > that. The most important thing is to have a new GNU > co-maintainer. I feel a bit bad about dropping out only a few > months after officially taking on that position, so I'll keep on > doing it for the next few months. It would be great if somebody > stepped forward for this -- start off by working on the known > problems with our GNU compliance, and we'll see how things > develop. > > The schedule for me leaving isn't at all fixed, but I imagine that > I'd be ok with spending 1-2 hours a week for months or even years > to come. The most important thing would be to keep it easy to > participate meaningfully with only a small amount of time. The > key to that are the patch countdowns and policy ideas coming as a > formal proposal. Not to brag, but I really think that the 2011 > summer GOP proposals were ideal. Topic were scheduled usually at > least a week in advance, proposals were on the web, a draft > existed for a week, then a firm proposal for another week. If > there was significant disagreement, the discussion was extended > and/or the policy was scrapped or rewritten. > > I'm not going to be reading -devel in detail, but if I knew that I > could check my mail (or a webpage) once a week at a regular time > to see a well-written proposal, I'd be happy to discuss it. I'm > not the only senior developer with waning interest or time for > lilypond; I think that such an arrangement could help keep all > those people slightly involved in lilypond. However, I'm not > going to be the person doing such organization any more. > > We've had a number of people recently warning about less energy > for LilyPond, so I know that this email isn't perfectly timed. > But hey, that's life. The next few months probably won't be > fantastic, but as long as you reduce any expectations, I don't > think it'll be too bad. > > All the best, > - Graham Percival > > _______________________________________________ > lilypond-devel mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-devel -- Han-Wen Nienhuys - [email protected] - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen _______________________________________________ lilypond-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-devel
