[[!tag debian retiring]]

I've started the process of retiring from Debian. Again. This will be my third time. It'll take a little while I take care of things to do this cleanly: uploading packages to set Maintainer to QA, removing myself from Plant Debian, sending the retirement email to -private, etc.

I've had a rough year, and Debian has also stopped being fun for me. There's a number of Debian people saying and doing things that I find disagreeable, and the process of developing Debian is not nearly as nice as it could be. There's way too much friction pretty much everywhere.

For example, when a package maintainer uploads a package, the package goes into an upload queue. The upload queue gets processed every few minutes, and the packages get moved into an incoming queue. The incoming queue gets processed every fifteen minutes, and packages get imported into the master archive. Changes to the master archive get pushed to main mirrors every six hours. Websites like lintian.debian.org, the package tracker, and the Ultimate Debian Database get updated at time. (Or their updates get triggered, but it might take longer for the update to actually happen. Who knows. There's almost no transparency.)

The developer gets notified, by email, when the upload queue gets processed, and when the incoming queue gets processed. If they want to see current status on the websites (to see if the upload fixed a problem, for example), they may have to wait for many more hours, possibly even a couple of days.

This was fine in the 1990s. It's not fine anymore.

That's not why I'm retiring. I'm just tired. I'm tired of dragging myself through high-friction Debian processes to do anything. I'm tired of people who should know better tearing open old wounds. I'm tired of all the unconstructive and aggressive whinging, from Debian contributors and users alike. I'm tired of trying to make things better and running into walls of negativity. (I realise I'm not being the most constructive with this blog post and with my retirement. I'm tired.)

I wish everyone else a good time making Debian better, however. Or whatever else they may be doing. I'll probably be back. I always have been, when I've retired before.