Time to calm down and to look into the future

[Martin Baulig <martin home-of-linux org>]

Hi guys,

ok, I got up very early this morning, did my university homework
and started to learn a bit. Already feeling way better than
yesterday evening.

I read most of the replies to that mail. However, I'm taking a few
days off now and be back on Friday.

But maybe I should try to explain.

Last weekend was the first them where I was actually getting confident
that we could make it until that API freeze. I realized a lot of my
ideas and a large part of my vision of GNOME 2 had become true. And for
the first time since months, there were people telling me that the want
to help me with GNOME 2 and what they should do. So I felt like we could
start working together on the remaining pieces of what needs to be done
to make GNOME 2 happen.

I'll most likely be away from July 9-21 'cause these are the last two
weeks at the university before summer holidays. So I was trying to make
a big TODO list to get people hacking.

Then came last Sunday night. Last sunday was actually a good day for me
since I did a lot of hacking in that holiday week and the next week (ie
this week) was a tree-day week at the university due to this Thursday
being a holiday in Germany.

I really should have gone to bed instead of hanging around in IRC since
suddenly I felt myself in the middle of a flamewar. After more than an
hour of arguing I was just too tired and went to bed, but the next morning
I overslept and missed class. Tuesday morning, I needed to watch the dog
and thus missed class another time. Then, tuesday afternoon we had this
Bugzilla/MySQL problem and I helped Owen to fix it. So I was also in IRC
most of tuesday afternoon and I felt like everything was in piece again.

Wednesyday morning I went to university and asked my friends "hey, I missed
the last two days, what have you guys done ?" Of course, we immediately had
that discussion again that I should concentrate more on university instead
of continuously asking them what I missed since I was hacking during class
time. And I can really understand their position since it looks really bad
if you come two hours before the weekend and ask what you missed all the
week. Actually I didn't miss that much, but it's still like needing to
"defend" my work on GNOME.

After class, I looked at the homework for next week and realized that it's
actually doable. So I walked home to read my mail and do some hackings.
Next day was a holiday so I felt like I had a lot of time to hack.

So I read my mail and found that mail from Owen (for which is already
apologized, btw) in my inbox which made me very angry. After reading that
mail, I was fucked and pissed, turned my machine off again and started to
learn a bit for the university.

The next day, I intentionally did not reply to that mail since I wanted to
talk with Michael first, but Michael was in vacations. So I decided to hack
a bit and learn a bit for the university for the rest of the week.

Friday evening, I was suddenly in the middle of a flamewar due to a technical
decision I made in a module which I was maintaining (libgnome). This flamewar
kept me so busy for hours that I had no time to do any hacking whatsoever
that whole day. After replying to one mail, I already had three other mails
in my inbox and this situation lasted for hours.

Michael tried his best to calm things down, but this whole thing still made
me very angry. Somewhere late in the night, I found Mathieu's mail on g-h.
I wasn't even mad with Mathieu because of it, I just feared that it'll cause
a lot more trouble. So I shut my machine down and went to bed.

The next day, yesterday morning, I found a lot more flamage. And after lunch,
I wrote that first g-h mail, but I only sent it to myself since I didn't want
to be a little child which runs away if there's a problem.

All the time, I really wanted to be release coordinator and I believed in that
vision of GNOME 2. When you guys made me release coordinator, I knew that this
is a very important and very responsible job and that it'll involve a lot of
work, but also a lot flamage and hate from time to time. But I wanted to do
this job since it was my dream to make GNOME 2 happen.

I did not want to run away or resign as release coordinator since I knew that
such flamage is sometimes part of the job and that a good release coordinator
must be able to solve such problems like a man and not like a child.

However, Maciej's mail finally gave me the impression that I failed. That I
failed with everything. Both with being release coordinator and with being
maintainer of libgnome(ui). Suddenly, I was in the situation that it looked to
me like the board was trying to kick me as release coordinator and to replace
me with someone else. And Maciej suggested that Havoc should just go ahead and
revert things in a module which I was maintaining. Other people even agreed
with him about this, so it looked to me as if I also failed as maintainer.

Maciej, how would you feel if you make a technical decision in OAF or another
module which you maintain and then suddenly you're the bad guy and people
suggest on g-h to go ahead and to revert your changes.

I don't know yet whether I still want to be GNOME 2.0 release coordinator or
whether I'll actually resign.

This was my big dream and this dream ended yesterday evening.

Give me a few days to reconsider, please.

Away until Friday,
-- 
Martin Baulig
martin gnome org (private)
baulig suse de (work)