Some questions

[nojaf]

Hello, when reading your tweet I couldn't help but wonder about a few things here.

These are all rather meta aspects of this repository and there won't be anything actionable. So if you don't feel like responding to this, I respect that and feel free to close this at any point.

Here goes:

• I can't help but think that the original problem statement here is that the maintainer of Giraffe not being as active as people would like. This is a genuine concern, but I wonder if communication has really failed here or wasn't attempted enough. Did you get Dustin's perspective first-hand via a virtual meeting? Not that you need it, but do you have his blessing for this altered fork? I think it would help this story if that is the case. The way the blog post was written, I cannot shake the sense that the two of you never had a serious conversation about this. Maybe things could have been resolved without going the fork route. If you both didn't see eye-to-eye, that is fine and this outcome is still okay, but did that conversation even happen?

• How are you not going to fall for the same trap? One of the issues with Giraffe seems to be that only a single person can release new NuGet packages. The reason this repository seems to exist is to prevent such a state from happening, but why did you not solve this issue first and announce this project when there were three or more maintainers on board in this quest? Because right now there is a lot of work left to do to get on a similar level as Giraffe. Getting started guides, documentation, starter templates, contribution guides, etc... These all take a lot of work and when it is just you, how far will you get before you get burned out as well?

• Did you check anything with the SAFE stack before this move happened? This is again not something you are required to do, but as far as I understand this, they also have a stake in the health of Giraffe. My point is, did you really check with enough sources in the community beforehand? You could have found some co-maintainers first before diving into the code.

• and move it to fsprojects once the project gets 200 stars, not a question here but some feedback: 200 stars is a poor metric to decide if something should go to fsprojects. What you are looking for is people you can trust to work with you on this. People you can give the publish keys to and can operate the project without your intervention.

To summarize my thoughts on this, I fear that good communication could have been lacking in this story. Did all parties really hear each other? Does everyone understand why there is friction?

The F# community is a small one, most popular projects only have one maintainer and that is problematic.
People do not talk enough with each other and I cannot help but feel that all of this is the direct result of a human problem.