[Community-news] where is Walter?

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 10:04 AM, Chris Preimesberger
<cpreimesberger at comcast.net> wrote:
> Walter, you have been a shining light of good information for all this
>  time, and it's sad to see you pull away from the project.  Sad to see
>  the project melting away, too -- at least that's my impression.
>

One standard thing I have seen is that every project goes through
these cycles. Developers/leaders leave a company, project or group
and the people who identified the project with those people post that
the project as "shriveling up and dying". I remember people saying
this of Debian, early Linux kernel development, Red Hat, SuSE, GNOME,
KDE, etc. Sometimes its true, but mostly its a gut reaction because
our brains are wired to identify with 'leaders' for our survival. If
our leaders leave the tribe.. we should go with them. Its a deep urge
we all have but it is rarely rooted in 'reality' but in the minds way
of coming up with 'reasons'.

I am just commenting on this because its something I have seen over
and over again with companies, projects, and groups.. and it
interested me why one day I was all happy to be working for a company
and 2 days later was ready to leave because it was going to crap when
a developer I worked under left.

The big thing I learned was that companies, projects, groups, etc
change constantly, and people who thrive under some conditions
deteriorate under others.. and have to leave. And when that happens,
there are a lot of psychological shifts in the group where other
people stay and leave because various 'leaders' stayed or left.. in
some cases you end up with large scisms where people will no longer
talk with each other, and in other cases you have people agreeing to
disagree on where each group is going.



-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"