New Emacs maintainer

New Emacs maintainer

[John Yates]

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>
> For those who've actually read to the end of this message: Richard and I
> met
> at MIT yesterday, where I officially accepted the role as maintainer of
> Emacs.
> An announcement is forthcoming, once we dot the i's and cross the t's. It's
> also why I've switched my subscription address to johnw@gnu.org, and would
> appreciate if Emacs-related issues are sent there, rather than to my other
> accounts.


(In a new thread...)

Thank you John for stepping up and for whatever comprises you may have had
to make to reach agreement with Richard.  I am sure that we will all
benefit from your leadership.

/john

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Re: New Emacs maintainer

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> John Yates <john@yates-sheets.org> writes:

> Thank you John for stepping up and for whatever comprises you may have had
> to make to reach agreement with Richard. I am sure that we will all benefit
> from your leadership.

Actually, there were no compromises made. I found Richard to be an absolute
delight to talk with. We discussed the architectural history of Pompeii,
admired his reading library, his tea collection... :)

I think many people misunderstand his devotion to freedom as being unreasoning
in his views -- as I had, not just a few month ago! On the contrary: I
proposed several Emacs-related ideas that I expected him to balk at, only to
find he happily considered everything, even suggesting further improvements.
At no point did I ever get the feeling that I was speaking to a closed mind.

I only wish I lived nearby so I could spend more time with him. He is truly an
amiable fellow. I have no worries about our ability to find a common path in
future, if issues that threaten his goals for software freedom arise.

John

Re: New Emacs maintainer

[Kaushal Modi]

Hi John W,

Congratulations on your new role! Looking forward to what's new to come.

--
Kaushal Modi

Re: New Emacs maintainer

[John Yates]

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On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 3:33 PM, John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Thank you John for stepping up and for whatever comprises you may have
> had
> > to make to reach agreement with Richard.
>
> Actually, there were no compromises made.


Wonderful to hear.  And precisely why I wrote "may have had to make".  I
did not want to presume that compromise was necessary.

/john

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Re: New Emacs maintainer

[David Kastrup]

John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com> writes:

>>>>>> John Yates <john@yates-sheets.org> writes:
>
>> Thank you John for stepping up and for whatever comprises you may
>> have had to make to reach agreement with Richard. I am sure that we
>> will all benefit from your leadership.
>
> Actually, there were no compromises made. I found Richard to be an
> absolute delight to talk with. We discussed the architectural history
> of Pompeii, admired his reading library, his tea collection... :)
>
> I think many people misunderstand his devotion to freedom as being
> unreasoning in his views -- as I had, not just a few month ago! On the
> contrary: I proposed several Emacs-related ideas that I expected him
> to balk at, only to find he happily considered everything, even
> suggesting further improvements.  At no point did I ever get the
> feeling that I was speaking to a closed mind.
>
> I only wish I lived nearby so I could spend more time with him. He is
> truly an amiable fellow. I have no worries about our ability to find a
> common path in future, if issues that threaten his goals for software
> freedom arise.

I am quite glad to hear it.

-- 
David Kastrup

Re: New Emacs maintainer

[Nicolas Petton]

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John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com> writes:

> Actually, there were no compromises made. I found Richard to be an absolute
> delight to talk with. We discussed the architectural history of Pompeii,
> admired his reading library, his tea collection... :)

That's absolutely great John, and thank you for stepping up!

Nico

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Re: New Emacs maintainer

[Pierre Lecocq]

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Thank you and congratulations John! Wish you all the best!

On 4 November 2015 at 08:58, Nicolas Petton <nicolas@petton.fr> wrote:

> John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Actually, there were no compromises made. I found Richard to be an
> absolute
> > delight to talk with. We discussed the architectural history of Pompeii,
> > admired his reading library, his tea collection... :)
>
> That's absolutely great John, and thank you for stepping up!
>
> Nico
>



-- 
         Pierre Lecocq - http://qsdfgh.com

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Re: New Emacs maintainer

[Karl Fogel]

Since we all know how to manage threads, I feel okay doing a me-too post here:

Congratulations, John!  You seem like the right person for the job; I hope you will feel that way in six months :-).  (Not sarcasm -- I think you will!)

Best,
-K

John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com> writes:
>>>>>> John Yates <john@yates-sheets.org> writes:
>
>> Thank you John for stepping up and for whatever comprises you may have had
>> to make to reach agreement with Richard. I am sure that we will all benefit
>> from your leadership.
>
>Actually, there were no compromises made. I found Richard to be an absolute
>delight to talk with. We discussed the architectural history of Pompeii,
>admired his reading library, his tea collection... :)
>
>I think many people misunderstand his devotion to freedom as being unreasoning
>in his views -- as I had, not just a few month ago! On the contrary: I
>proposed several Emacs-related ideas that I expected him to balk at, only to
>find he happily considered everything, even suggesting further improvements.
>At no point did I ever get the feeling that I was speaking to a closed mind.
>
>I only wish I lived nearby so I could spend more time with him. He is truly an
>amiable fellow. I have no worries about our ability to find a common path in
>future, if issues that threaten his goals for software freedom arise.
>
>John

Re: New Emacs maintainer

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com> writes:

> Congratulations, John! You seem like the right person for the job; I hope
> you will feel that way in six months :-). (Not sarcasm -- I think you will!)

Thank you, to everyone!!

I think the key to avoided burnout will be not trying to do everything myself.
There are excellent people in this community, who together have more time and
energy than I will in a lifetime. If I can coordinate them, and help them
focus on what they find fun and interesting, not only will this job be easier
for me, it should be more fun for everyone. We're doing this because we love
Emacs, right? Pursuing one's love ought to make the time spent feel worth
every second! if not, there's an obstacle we need to remove.

John

Re: New Emacs maintainer

[Emanuel Berg]

John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com> writes:

> Thank you, to everyone!!
>
> I think the key to avoided burnout will be not
> trying to do everything myself. There are excellent
> people in this community, who together have more
> time and energy than I will in a lifetime. If I can
> coordinate them, and help them focus on what they
> find fun and interesting, not only will this job be
> easier for me, it should be more fun for everyone.
> We're doing this because we love Emacs, right?
> Pursuing one's love ought to make the time spent
> feel worth every second! if not, there's an obstacle
> we need to remove.

OK, so you are the maintainer of all of Emacs?
How does that work? :O

Are there "submaintainers" for parts of Emacs -
I don't mean third-party add-ons (e.g., Emacs-w3m) or
for that matter software found in the ELPAs, which are
obviously stand-alone projects. I mean for example
help.el? In the header, it says

    Maintainer: emacs-devel@gnu.org

Does that mean you?

On my Debian, the maintainer of emacs24 is
Rob Brownin, however I take it that refers to the
Debian package, not the Emacs source.

Anyway, according to cloc [1] I have written 95 files
of Elisp totalling 3721 lines of code. That doesn't
strike me as neither a lot nor something
insignificant... But I feel pretty confident because
it works.

I mention this because if you have something that has
been abandoned or left half-baked I'm happy to lend
a hand. I can be an asset in part because what I like
in technology, few others like (which is sad for me
and... them). So if everyone wants to do LaTeX it is
good if at least a few want to do groff. (Actually
I like LaTeX and Biblatex as well.) You know what I'm
saying? Do you have a TODO list or anything?

Keep it real :)

[1] http://cloc.sourceforge.net/

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: New Emacs maintainer

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:

> OK, so you are the maintainer of all of Emacs? How does that work? :O

The most appropriate title, I believe, would be "managing maintainer", or
"head maintainer".

There are several people whose level of commitment to the project places them
in the role of "maintainer" in my eyes, such as Eli, Artur, Juanma, Stefan,
Chong, etc. They truly help to maintain Emacs, by working on bugs,
contributing code, answering questions, writing tests, etc.

My decisions more often concern people matters, technical direction, legal
issues, coordinating with the FSF, scheduling releases, etc.

>     Maintainer: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Does that mean you?

It means the whole Emacs development community who has subscribed to that
mailing list. Anyone desiring to take an active role in Emacs development
should be subscribed to this list, although it is not required.

> On my Debian, the maintainer of emacs24 is Rob Brownin, however I take it
> that refers to the Debian package, not the Emacs source.

Correct.

> Anyway, according to cloc [1] I have written 95 files of Elisp totalling
> 3721 lines of code. That doesn't strike me as neither a lot nor something
> insignificant... But I feel pretty confident because it works.

Every line of Elisp that serves you well is precious. :)

> I mention this because if you have something that has been abandoned or left
> half-baked I'm happy to lend a hand. I can be an asset in part because what
> I like in technology, few others like (which is sad for me and... them). So
> if everyone wants to do LaTeX it is good if at least a few want to do groff.
> (Actually I like LaTeX and Biblatex as well.) You know what I'm saying? Do
> you have a TODO list or anything?

I'd love for someone to take care of our under-appreciated components. The
TODO list right now is largely the bugtracker. Would you be willing to comb
through some of the older reports, and find those bugs that no longer
reproduce, or help resolve those that have patches needing review? Such a role
would be extremely helpful.

John

Re: New Emacs maintainer

[Emanuel Berg]

John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com> writes:

> I'd love for someone to take care of our
> under-appreciated components. The TODO list right
> now is largely the bugtracker. Would you be willing
> to comb through some of the older reports, and find
> those bugs that no longer reproduce, or help resolve
> those that have patches needing review? Such a role
> would be extremely helpful.

Hey, under-appreciated is my breath of life. No, that
sounds like fun. How do you go about it? Is the
bugtracker a textfile or do you use an interface?

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: New Emacs maintainer

[Kaushal Modi]

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> How do you go about it? Is the bugtracker a textfile or do you use an
interface?

I look up the bug list on

https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/pkgreport.cgi?package=emacs;max-bugs=100;base-order=1;bug-rev=1

You can also subscribe to the RSS feed if you like:
http://rss.gmane.org/messages/excerpts/gmane.emacs.bugs

More variants of the debbugs RSS: http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.bugs

There's also a debbugs package available on GNU Elpa to review/reply to the
bug reports from within emacs (I haven't tried that yet).

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ToDo list and bugtracker

[Andreas Röhler]

  On 06.11.2015 03:31, John Wiegley wrote:
>
> I'd love for someone to take care of our under-appreciated components.

+1
>   The
> TODO list right now is largely the bugtracker. Would you be willing to comb
> through some of the older reports, and find those bugs that no longer
> reproduce, or help resolve those that have patches needing review? Such a role
> would be extremely helpful.
>
> John
>

IMO that would require a joint effort at least of Hercules and Rübezahl. 
Because Emacs changed, older bugs aim at a fairly different state, thus 
real hard to re-track in many cases.

What about archiving old bugs after a certain time instead, so 
historiens might grab them if interested?

Cheers,

Andreas

Re: New Emacs maintainer

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

The term "maintainer" has a special meaning in the GNU Project.  Each
GNU package has one or several people appointed to be in charge of it,
and we call them the "maintainers" of that package.

At present, you're the one and only Emacs maintainer.  We could have
more than one; at one point, Stefan Monnier and Chong Yidong were both
Emacs maintainers together.  If there is someone else you'd propose as
a co-maintainer, please let me know; it might be a good idea.  But
there isn't any other Emacs maintainer now.

To avoid confusion, let's not use the term "maintainer", unqualified,
for any other meaning.

It's up to you, as maintainer, how to organize the work on Emacs.  If
you delegate responsibility for some part XYZ of Emacs to another
person, it is ok to call that person "the maintainer of XYZ", as long
as it's clear that that person is not an Emacs maintainer.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

Re: New Emacs maintainer

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> To avoid confusion, let's not use the term "maintainer", unqualified, for
> any other meaning.
>
> It's up to you, as maintainer, how to organize the work on Emacs. If you
> delegate responsibility for some part XYZ of Emacs to another person, it is
> ok to call that person "the maintainer of XYZ", as long as it's clear that
> that person is not an Emacs maintainer.

Thanks for the clarification.

John