

last call for GRUB maintainership

Erich, I'm writing to ask you to reconsider your official commitment
to GRUB.  This is a public letter, because it's the only way I've been
able to get replies from you in the past.  If you are simply busy, and
can't answer, but you want to reply thoroughly, please tell me.

I've been doing real work on GRUB lately, and I have the unsettling
feeling that my code is rapidly diverging from yours, and that you
aren't putting any effort into helping me merge it (i.e. by making
your sources available, or at least replying to my e-mail).

I need you to understand that nobody is judging you for not doing much
work on GRUB lately.  We're just getting irritated because you *say*
you'll do work, but then you don't.

It is perfectly fine for you to drop GRUB.  Everybody has jobs that
they'd *like* to do, but simply can't because they have other
priorities.  It seems you've wanted to be GRUB maintainer for the past
few years, but you haven't actually done that job.  Instead, GRUB has
been mainly neglected, because nobody wanted to subvert your

Perhaps you'd rather be a contributor to GRUB (as well as its original
author), so that peoples' expectations of you aren't as high as they
are now?  I've found that very freeing, myself... I gave up my libtool
maintainership so that I could become a contributor, and let the
people who wanted to work on it have their way without stumbling over
me all the time.

This is about the fourth time I've suggested that you give up
maintainership voluntarily.  However, it seems you gave up
maintainership a long time ago, judging from the number of GRUB
spinoffs that have features which haven't been merged into your
release: one from Japan that supports internationalization, one from
Germany that supports network booting, and a grubinst program that
addressed installation deficiencies.

I hope that you'll still contribute to GRUB, but I'm now officially
relieving you as maintainer (hopefully, other people will step forward
as well, so that a group of us can maintain it rather than just me),
unless you can provide me with a good reason why I shouldn't.

If you want to be helpful, please let me know how you were intending
to solve the LS-120 problem, so that I can implement it myself even if
you won't send patches.

As always, I hope that this is agreeable to you, but I think I've been
more than fair in this matter, whether you like my behaviour or not.


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