Re: Leaving the GNU Guix community

[Chris Marusich <cmmarusich@gmail.com>]

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Hi Léo,

I'm sorry to hear that you feel that you need to leave the community.  I
can understand why you feel that way, but I hope you'll remember that
(to my knowledge) nobody has said that they don't want you here.

I realize that in this moment, it must sting terribly to have your
commit rights temporarily revoked.  However, even before you gained
commit access, you contributed great things to Guix: patches, ideas,
computing resources, your energy and enthusiasm, and so on.  I
personally know that we would not have ported Guix successfully to
POWER9 without your help!  I guess what I'm trying to say is that even
without commit access, it's possible to be a contributor and a community
member.  And in any case, the maintainers have made it clear that the
commit access suspension does not need to be permanent:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2021-04/msg00489.html

They said:

"I'm sorry to say your commit privileges have been temporarily
suspended.  After one month, you are invited to get in touch with the
maintainers collective and discuss next steps."

They have explicitly left the door open.

By the way, speaking of contributions, I think your latest email here
raises some very good points.  I don't have good solutions to suggest
for any of them, I'm afraid, but I can say that I share many of your
concerns.  The "user experience" can definitely be better in many ways.
I also agree that the line between "user" and "developer" can and should
be blurred (programs like Emacs or LibreOffice or RenPy come to mind).
The more the line can be blurred successfully, the more it can empower
the user/developer, but it is tricky to do.  I mean, how many
non-programmers do you know who really use Emacs (or Vim)?  Personally,
I know none.  I know a lot of people who use Excel, though, or programs
like RenPy which are easy to "script" - i.e., program.  There are ways.

I also think it is more difficult than necessary to get started
contributing to Guix.  I wish it were easier, but I don't have any good
suggestions for that right now, either.  I think a lot of people who
have played with Guix code and participated in the Guix community also
experience these same difficulties, but I guess maybe people don't talk
about it too much because it's truly hard to come up with better
solutions than what we have.  There is also the issue of lack of time;
for those contributors (like myself, currently) who work on the project
only as volunteers in their spare time, it can sometimes be difficult to
find the time.  People tend to contribute in areas they are interested
in, which is fair, and there is always far more work to do than any
single person can finish on their own.

I wish you the very best in whatever you do, and I hope you'll return to
the Guix community when you feel that we can collaborate together again.

-- 
Chris

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