Hi Øyvind. I very much appreciate the constructive advice for help.
On 2011.06.10 12:21, Øyvind Harboe wrote:
Seems like a good opportunity for someone in the community to step up to the plate and take over the project if they want to.
Well, the only problem we have here is that Daniel Drake, the official libusb project admin (i.e. the person who can assign new maintainers), is pretty much MIA as well as he doesn't participate/monitor the mailing list at all, and therefore hasn't stepped in to add more people, even as some would be undoubtedly be willing to.
Has someone obviously qualified stepped up and offered to help on libusb as a maintainer?
Pretty much. Segher Boessenkool, who has some good experience on these matters, was added as an helping hand shortly after Peter became maintainer and pretty much became a second in command at some stage, but (though I cannot speak for him) he was apparently eventually driven away by the lack of releases, or possibly because he didn't want to be seen as stepping over Peter's toes when the situation demanded it.
Has Peter refused such an offer?
Well, Peter has certainly refused to step down, despite everybody else on the list pretty much voicing their support to the idea that this is the right thing for him to do, if he doesn't have the time/doesn't want to be involved.
Has someone qualified stepped up and offered to do the work of being a release engineer?
I guess Segher could fit that profile. The other option we envisioned was to split maintenance activities between Linux, OSX and Windows platforms, and in effect have 3 maintainers. This was privately proposed about 1 months ago, but we're still waiting to hear back from the project admin on that...
Has someone offered to pay Peter for the time he spends on libusb so he can address these issues?
I think if we need paid contributions for libusb to move forward, not that I am against it if it helps, then we have a bigger problem... I believe the project should be large enough to find volunteers willing to contribute in their spare time.
Is there anything in the libusb license that stops someone from forking the project?
Nope. Just people knowing that forking over a single maintainer's lack of involvement, where said maintainer should very much be aware of the predicament he is inflicting on everybody else, isn't the right thing to do for the project users and will only serve to confuse them.
Regards, /Pete _______________________________________________ Openocd-development mailing list [email protected] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/openocd-development
