<div dir="ltr"><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">Dear Juanjo,</div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
Thank you very much for your diligent and hard work over such a long period of time! </div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
It is very sad to hear about your decision. But as you say: sometimes it is better to accept reality than to fight against it.<br></div><div class="im" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">
<div><br></div><div>> * First of all, ECL no longer relates to my own work. On the contrary, other open source projects that I carry on (<a href="https://github.com/juanjosegarciaripoll?tab=repositories" target="_blank">https://github.com/juanjosegarciaripoll?tab=repositories</a>) are more directly related to my research and are demanded by my group. This is detracting development time from the project, but there is little I can do, as that numerical software is what feeds our bellies right now.</div>
<div><br></div></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">It seems that your other projects are based mainly on C, C++ and Perl? I imagine that ECL could be an ideal wrapper / scripting tool to unify them into one powerful framework which would make experimentation with your libraries much easier. </div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">It would be wonderful if there was funding for such a project so that you could "feed" your "bellies" at least partly by working on ECL. But I am sure you thought about this yourself...</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">> [...] I spend more time writing grant applications and bureaucracy than I do in front of Emacs. Quite frustrating as it is, I only see it worsening in the near future.</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">Unfortunately this seems to be the general tendency. I wonder if some day we will spent all our time "managing" each other - while there is no time left for actual work. Getting rid of all this bureaucracy and being able to use the money for the research itself would be wonderful.</div>
<div class="im" style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><div><br></div><div>> * <b>I am resigning and opening the position of ECL maintainer for anyone to take</b>. I will grant him or her with full administrative rights and full responsibility over the project's future. No need to fork the project: if you really feel you can make it better, step ahead and take it. I will remain as a support developer and help you as much as I can.</div>
<div><br></div></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">It will be very very difficult to find somebody with the necessary knowledge, experience, and motivation to take over your position, I fear.</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">Thanks again for all your help and work, with my best wishes for you and ECL's future,</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.800000190734863px">Dietrich</div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 5:54 PM, Juan Jose Garcia-Ripoll <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:juanjose.garciaripoll@gmail.com" target="_blank">juanjose.garciaripoll@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Hi everybody,<div><br></div><div>as you may have noticed, my level of responsiveness in the last months has gone down to almost zero. At the beginning I expected it would be transitory, but it seems that it is here to stay. The situation is such that I decided to write this email, both as an explanation and also to gather your feedback.</div>
<div><br></div><div>* First of all, ECL no longer relates to my own work. On the contrary, other open source projects that I carry on (<a href="https://github.com/juanjosegarciaripoll?tab=repositories" target="_blank">https://github.com/juanjosegarciaripoll?tab=repositories</a>) are more directly related to my research and are demanded by my group. This is detracting development time from the project, but there is little I can do, as that numerical software is what feeds our bellies right now.</div>
<div><br></div><div>* Not only does my work consume most of my open-software development time, but the job overall does significantly constraint the time I can spare for the project. As group leader in a research environment with scarce resources, I spend more time writing grant applications and bureaucracy than I do in front of Emacs. Quite frustrating as it is, I only see it worsening in the near future.</div>
<div><br></div><div>* The consequence is that the time I can devote to ECL has serious ups and downs. In an environment of rapidly developing tools and libraries, this is quite unfortunate, as the project may lag behind and become obsolete. This is indeed what has happened with several of the ports out there.</div>
<div><br></div><div>* On top of this, there are a lot of frustrating things that I did not want to care about but which are bugging me right now and also stealing time. The first one is the license issue. I put out a suggestion to migrate to MPIR because I knew that MPIR had an effort to stay with LGPL2. Regrettably, I did not know that this effort was abandoned so that if ECL wishes to upgrade to any more recent version of GMP/MPIR it has to migrate to LGPL3.</div>
<div><br></div><div>* Another nagging issue is testing. You have suffered this in the past and it still is a problem: my testing environment is broken and I do not have time to fix it. Despite Anton's wonderful library, the fact is that it is a heck of a problem to maintain several virtual machines and computers in an uncooperative computing environment with frequent blackouts.</div>
<div><br></div><div><div>* Finally, on the one hand, there are many new upcoming implementations out there, some with promising results and features that I do not have the time to incorporate -- but which would be simple with resources -- and certain forks are consolidating. On the other hand, despite ten years of development, I have failed to aggregate any number of <b>contributing</b> developers around this project. This may be blamed on the community or on myself, and it does not match the supportive and helpful user base that ECL has always had, but the fact is that it is a problem and a time has come to accept it [but please, I do not need your pity on the IRC channels, ok?]</div>
</div><div><br></div><div>Though I did not have time to develop, I had time to think, even if on the bus trips and planes, and I came to the following conclusions:</div><div><br></div><div>* <b>I am resigning and opening the position of ECL maintainer for anyone to take</b>. I will grant him or her with full administrative rights and full responsibility over the project's future. No need to fork the project: if you really feel you can make it better, step ahead and take it. I will remain as a support developer and help you as much as I can.</div>
<div><br></div><div>* If no one takes over maintenance, I will <b>continue working as I can</b>, when I can. This may be <b>unsatisfactory</b> for many of you -- if this is the case, I am sorry, but that's all there is.</div>
<div><br></div><div>In this later case, the following actions are needed:</div><div><br></div><div>* I am not going to change ECL's license. LGPL3's restrictions on web applications seem stupid to me and, as experience has shown, making such a move will only make things worse. Already LGPL2 is a hindrance, but I can live with it.</div>
<div><br></div><div>* This said, GMP v5 is insufficient for several platforms but I will maintain it as it is. <b>On platforms where GMP becomes obsolete, it will shift to building with "C"</b> (i.e. no optimized assembly code). I tested this on Cygwin/64 and it works -- <b>indeed it is part of the source tree right now</b>. If you need a better GMP, build ECL with the one that your operating system provides and be tied to its license.</div>
<div><br></div><div>* I am abandoning things that I cannot support or that represent an inconvenience. <b>CVS support is dropped as of now</b>. I will probably remove the repository in a few weeks to enforce this. Git is working pretty well on Windows, as I have been able to verify, and SF's git repository works behind a firewall just nice, while CVS does not.</div>
<div><br></div><div>* On a similar line, if integrating third-party libraries becomes an issue, they will be completely <b>dropped or frozen</b>. For instance, ECL may end up demanding that <b>you</b> install libffi or libgc, leaving an old but working version for me to enjoy building on Windows only.</div>
<div><br></div><div>* I am also <b>abandoning the effort to do extensive testing of ECL on various platforms</b>. If you are interested on a particular platform, you will have to build and test yourself and report problems through SF's bug report.</div>
<div><br></div><div>* I am <b>no longer providing support through the mailing list</b>, which is relegated to discussing other topics on the development of ECL itself --i.e. design flaws, patches, project future, etc. If you hit a bug, report it through the mailing list with a reproducible case. If you need help, hopefully you will get it from other users here.<br>
<br>I am sorry that things reached this point, but sometimes it is better to accept reality than to fight against it. Now it is time for you to speak or act. If you feel that this hijacks your interest on the project, there's no worry: just say it so :-)</div>
<div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div><br></div><div>Juanjo<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br><br>-- <br>Instituto de Física Fundamental, CSIC<br>c/ Serrano, 113b, Madrid 28006 (Spain) <br><a href="http://juanjose.garciaripoll.googlepages.com" target="_blank">http://juanjose.garciaripoll.googlepages.com</a><br>
</font></span></div></div>
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