As the new year starts, I'm announcing that I'm taking a sabbatical from the p2
lead position starting now until at least September 2012.
Short explanations
Through a large part of 2011, my involvement in p2 has been solely done on my
personal time. I simply no longer have the energy and motivation to contribute
my personal time toward the project. I want to focus this precious time toward
my family and learn new things.
Of course should any big issue arises, I will be reachable to help, and I will
continue to take on small consulting engagements like I did in the past.
Long explanations
There are several reasons for this decision that are pretty much all
intertwined. Below is an attempt at giving a clear description of my situation.
Let's start by some assertions:
- As a lead of p2, I feel obliged to help the community by answering questions,
triaging bugs, participating in evolution discussions, etc.
- My day time job consists in defining a cool new product for Sonatype, and I
spend most of my day in JIRA, meetings and emails. No code.
- p2 is now a personal project.
- I want to code and learn new things.
Now come the explanation:
- When I go back home at night I would like to do something fun on my personal
time. However because of my role in p2, p2 is no longer something fun for me to
do because it is a repeat of my paying job. Of course, I could ignore p2
conversations and just hack code but this is not good leadership. So instead I
do something else and pretend I don't have the time… This has led to frustrated
users and contributors. Reality is that I would have the time, jut not the
desire.
- Also my lack of involvement puts me in a weak spot when it comes to ask
people to contribute to p2 since I don't contribute much myself.
All in all I feel guilty for not meeting my responsibilities. By no longer
leading, I will be able to do whatever I want without having the feeling of
guilt nagging me.
Now what?
Even though p2 is mature, it still has plenty of untapped potential that could
take the project beyond its current state. In the coming weeks I will work with
Tom Watson to figure out if a co-lead is necessary and talk the potential
candidates into it :)
After the sabbatical?
Once the sabbatical over, I will reexamine my position and see if I simply need
to drop the co-leadership and move on, or become again more engaged in the
project.
Thanks for reading that far.
Good year and good luck,
Sincerely,
PaScaL
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