Bastien is going to become the maintainer of Org mode in January

[Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>]

Dear all,

after 7 years of responsibility for Org-mode, it is time for
me to let go and step down as the maintainer of Org-mode.

This has not been an easy decision to make.  Org-mode has
been a very important part of my life during these years
and given me as much energy as it has taken.  I am proud of
this creation and extremely grateful for the opportunity
to work with the absolutely outstanding community around
it.  But the day-to-day responsibilities have worn me down,
and I need to step back, move on, and focus on other things.

I am very excited that I have found Bastien Guerry willing
to take over.  Bastien has been involved with this project
almost from the beginning and I believe he knows more
about both the spirit and the technicalities of Org-mode
than anybody else.  I am sure he will do an excellent job.
There is a core of very knowledgeable and great people who
carry the project together.  I hope very much that everyone
will be helping out Bastien just like you have all helped
me - then this will be a very smooth transition.

As a formal date for the transition we have picked January 1st
2011.  Until then, I will spend time to clean up where I can,
and to document the maintainer tasks in the new README_maintainer
file in the git repo.  On January 1st I will also switch the
"Donate" button on the web page to point to an account owned
by Bastien, to help him offset any costs involved with his
contribution of time and money (like the web server that he
has been sponsoring so far).  If you always wanted to throw
a donation in my direction but have not found the right
moment to do so - this is still possible until the end of
December.

I am not going to disappear from the project.  I will still
be on the mailing list, answering questions when I can, and
contribute code and fixes when I find time to do so.  Maybe,
with the daily tasks taken off my hands, I will even be able
to write bigger chunks of code.  But all of this will be on
a much less regular basis than the daily flush of emails I
am sending out now.

I hope very much that you will all continue to enjoy a life
in plain text :)

With kind regards

- Carsten