Hi all,
As you might have already read in other places, I would like to gradually transition out of OpenRefine and move on to other projects. I think it's useful to have a dedicated thread about that, to give a bit of background on why and how.
So first, why? There are many reasons, but those are the main ones:
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I think it is generally healthy for a project to make sure each participant is replaceable. Although this has been theorized at length (for instance with the bus factor), it is still pretty common to see open source maintainers steering a project for decades. On the surface at least, it often looks as if they wouldn't give up this position unless until physically forced to. It feels unwise for the project, as it is stuck in the hands of this person and subject to their arbitrary decisions. But arguably it's also detrimental to the maintainer themselves, because they build their entire reputation around the project, make it their little nest and become quite dependent on it. I have no interest in playing this role in OpenRefine. So I want to be proactive in leaving the floor to others.
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I notice that I don't learn as much as I used to. Joining OpenRefine was exciting because it came with a lot of challenges: some of technical nature, many of human nature, and I learned a lot by trying to tackle them. I clearly haven't solved them all, but it feels like it's somehow more of the same now. I feel a bit stuck in a routine. I think it would be better for me to work in a different environment, where I would learn more things. And I think it would be good for OpenRefine too, as it would leave room for people with different strengths.
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Of course, I've had conflicts with people. They are to be expected. In many cases it was possible to get some form of closure and resolution and continue working together. In other cases, not really. The difficulty in communicating and growing interpersonal relationships in a fully-remote project also makes the healing process more complicated in my opinion. That left scars, and made me realize that my presence in this project is likely keeping others away from it. Another reason not to cling on too much. A bit ironic that I just launched a project about conflict resolution, isn't it?
Then, how to leave? One one hand, I want it to be gradual and coordinated, to avoid disrupting things too much. On the other, I actually think the project would do very well if I disappeared overnight. Take reviewing pull requests as an example: it's an area where I do a lot at the moment, and perhaps the area where the change would be the most noticeable on the short term, but it's because I do a lot that others don't do more. So on the long term I am not worried.
Concerning the timeline, I'd like to stop paid work on the reproducibility project and general maintenance by the end of March at the latest. I would like to leave the advisory committee too. I think that could happen in the coming weeks already, but I don't mind staying a bit longer if there is a good reason for it. I would also like to remove myself from the GitHub organization, say in Spring 2025 for instance, to leave a bit of buffer. I'm hoping that by doing that, we also get a bit more concrete governance practice (how do we renew the advisory committee? how do people get access to the review queue for vulnerability reports?) and make some progress on that.
Anyway, I don't have very strict requirements for the timeline, so I'm open to adjustments. Also, if you have suggestions of jobs I should apply for, I am all ears (I have a few leads but nothing set in stone).