DevG response to [GOP2-0] Why are we losing developers?

[Colin Hall]

I'm replying directly as I have nothing to say in secret.

There have been moments of disagreement with other developers that
left me feeling annoyed and occasionally put down rather
disrespectfully, sometimes to the extent that I decided to disconnect
from LilyPond altogether, but that feeling never lasted more than a
day or so, and I have no lasting ill-feeling to anyone on the lists.

But it is true I contribute far less than I did : compared to the time
when I was actively involved in writing documentation I now
essentially contribute nothing.  There are several reasons for this,
but none of them are to do with what Graham calls "problematic
reasons."  Serious involvement with LilyPond, be it as a user,
developer or doc-writer, requires a serious commitment of time and
effort.  For me, and probably for most others, that level of
dedication can be maintained only for so long.  All the things in life
that were neglected during the period of my devotion to LP eventually
become so pressing that the LP work has to be abandoned in order to
attend to them.  This was the main reason for my ceasing to work on
documentation.

Since then I've dipped in and out of LP work, but I find contributing
on a casual basis difficult.  My usual working environment is MS
Windows, and I developed scripts which enabled me to write, test and
push documentation patches within that environment.  All my doc work
was done in this way, but following a change of machine, texi2html no
longer works under Windows.  The alternative of firing up a VM to run
Ubuntu works fine but it is, I find, an unattractive proposition on my
small laptop due to the effect it has on Windows.

So I think these are "good reasons", and anyway I've not "left"
LilyPond, just not as involved as I used to be.  I suspect those that
have truly left will simply not bother replying to Graham's request.

DevG

-- 

Colin Hall