Technical skills are not the major part here, I fear. It's about soft skills, about managing the process and the people involved; and as we can see, this is in fact the part that was too hard.

I'm still kind of shocked. I'm feeling a bit guilty, as I haven't communicated with Sawyer for a long time, so he might get the impression that most of the community shared the views of a few most loud members. The lockdown situation didn't help with interpersonal relations, either.

I started learning Python few weeks ago. In hindsight, it was a hunch or divine inspiration :-(

... so he might get the impression that most of the community shared the views of a few most loud members

Yes, I think that can happen when those that incessantly question and raise objections to the plans being made are allowed to continue unchallenged.
I've seen numerous posts made in relation to the steering committee activities, and to the perl7 plans, where I've thought "just shut the fuck up, and let them get on with it !!".
But, of course, I've said nothing. After all, I'm certainly no expert.

It's sad ... I felt that perl was in good hands while SawyerX was at the helm, and yet I've done nothing to encourage him to stay there.

Cheers,
Rob

I've seen various posts and actions recently which are totally the opposite. One person making a decision, no discussion to be had, despite many people with vested interests trying to point out that there are better courses of action. An example Regarding the closure of rt.cpan. Fortunately enough push back occurred and something was done about it. From what I understand based on people actually doing the work on perl core/toolchain, rather than making managerial decisions, this has been the case with a lot of the decisions made about perl7, some of the people involved commented on the HN thread linked to earlier, e.g. Christian Walde have documented the situation well. Letting people "just get on with it" isn't always the best idea.

This is why I refuse to criticize devs willing to do things I am not; or am unqualified to even try. I suggest that 2020 amped up a lot of anxiety, frustration, fear, and helplessness and therefore anger so it’s partly just bad timing.

I encourage other devs to apply gentle peer pressure to the angry set trying to steer Perl from the backseat. Something must change. Either be the change or leave others alone to try to find the right path.

For some 2020 ain't no different than previous years

IMHO most of the comments here should be ignored, some perl people close to the situation make good points. See also https://gist.github.com/wchristian/4e1bcdb761f20985b0a5c97a423a4fc6#file-__sawyer-txt

yes is sad event, see the (ongoing) thread also linked in the above article. I dont think perl needs, deserves still more bad events.

My opinion comes from the far far away border of the community: I never partecipated outside perlmonks, I dont even dream to have technical skills needed to contribute to the language itself. But here I'm to say what I feel, just as one person.

Yesterday I chatted a bit in #perl channel on IRC I listened "other bells" as we say in Eataly. The truth never lies (!) just in one side.

My point of view is ideally the same of Your Mother: "I refuse to criticize devs willing to do things I am not"

personalism

But evidently we are not all in this mood and I can understand it: if someone, really partecipating in perl developping has another, different position they feel they cannot refuse to criticize. How this happens? We are reading words as bullying , harasement, hostility.. not that fun. of course this can be only the perception of the author of the post. In IRC yesterday night I also learnt a new word: "sealayioning" ..omg.

I said: this can be only the perception. This is bad enough! If someone has this perception they are in uncoformtable situation. So or they are a psychopath (and I exclude this in this case) or they feel like this because something let them to perceive the environment this way.

Why we have the arrogance to make someone feeling bad? If someone is, let say, more fragile than the average, I tend to, I must treat them with more care. Especially if they are doing some work for me.

Personalism take birdth in our frustrations. We are all, more or less, frustrated. It is so easy to vomit on the neighbour our latent hate, in many distinct flavours of vomit, but still vomit.

In real life (and internet is even worst..) I saw this happening many times, so many times that I'm tired of. Movements fresh and appealing becoming a swamp of sorrow and poisons.

too much freedom?

I hate rules. I have enough hubris to say: I'm a good fellow even without rules. But I also know, and this time from my experience, that freedom not alwayas attracts our nicer, best part. While in internet everything is also falsed by a layer of "let's pretend", mimicry, conscious or not. It is part of the game. As under the alchol effect, while chatting or intercting in internet we have less inibitions. Sometimes this is a good thing, but rarely.

At $work we dont act this way. Why? Because we, conscious or not, we live in fear and we are assimilitated the sneaky, stinking thing called gerarchy. At $work the present perl situation, happening, it would be impossible. Someone would be fired before, by far before such situation can even happen.

We like freedom? Or we want to sell perl to some company, just to interact correclty?

Freedom is hard work. Like laziness. Freedom has its own rules and self rules. Freedom is based on ethic.

we need some help?

people in history already experienced these kind of problems. And we all know how best ideas converted to the worst systems on Earth: French revolution? Soviets? Did you need more examples? But there are some sparks of light in history, when people discussed how the power works and how it must be applied. Autogestion is hard to implement. Historically autogestion was ever fragile.

We are living at borders of a rare period: free software is still a great think, with some chance to survive. do we really need to fall under the spectre of personalism? Are we able to manage a community?

We can learn from other organizations, not only in the IT world, who faced same perils. We also have professionists who can help us. Why cant we pay some socio/psycho doctor to follow our leader developping team? Serioulsy!

Are we in the position to burn out fresh and willing brains? I doubt it. We need to squeeze 120% of our manpower to evolve and survive. Do we need my copntribution? I doubt, but just in case: here I'm.

ethic

We all want this to be the last time something like this happens, dont we? As with relatives I always says: take the best it comes from them, simply ignore all the remaining. If not some rules, we need a frame of relations that must be saner than the present one. At the end we need a new ethic.

No one, at every level of contribuitions, must feel harassed or damaged anymore, please, no one.

We have a lovable language; are we able to build a lovable community?

PS CAT April 19th 2021

L*

Discipulus, ideological doppelgänger ++

No one, at every level of contribuitions, must feel harassed or damaged anymore, please, no one.

i wish. But is it even possible?how?

There's another commentary here from Leon Timmermans which adds some context.

Thanks hippo,

a nice and positive read. I added there my long contribution where I also linked to the current thread. Comments, here and there, warmly welcome.

L*

PS August 10 2021:see also Another resignation, this time from CAT

There are no rules, there are no thumbs..
Reinvent the wheel, then learn The Wheel; may be one day you reinvent one of THE WHEELS.

A good immediate first step would be to figure out where team PERLCANCAR gets its Jolt Cola so we can get some and get to work. Similarly some ideations on module ideas using something like Algorithm::MarkovChain might also work. Science.

Quantity != quality and certainly != usefulness.



The way forward always starts with a minimal test.