So long, and thanks for all the fish

And the hope I had is dying;
and what we had has come undone;
then your smile, it melts away again.

— Caribou, Melody Day

As part of my new effort to actually start making progress again on some of my projects, I'm going through all the ones on my metaphorical desk, and deciding which ones to put back on the metaphorical shelf. One of those projects is the Debian New Maintainer process (and then more generally, being a Debian Developer); unfortunately, I've come to the conclusion that this is one of those projects that needs to be shelved. Some of the delays in my progression through NM can be attributed to waiting on my AM and so on, but largely it has been a matter of not having the time to spend on NM. As time rolls on, it seems even less likely that I'll have the time to finish the process off, much less actually doing real work as a DD; there's just a handful of packages I've ever cared about, and I'm starting to care less and less about all of this in general. I'm not sure yet whether I'll keep maintaining the packages I'm currently involved with, or just cut them loose (almost all of them have co-maintenance, or no longer matter much).

This decision has been a bit more disturbing than I thought it would be, and I'll probably think about it a bit more in the days to come, but for now it looks like this is the end of the road for me.

Stay tuned for more news about what other projects are going on the shelf, and which ones may be seeing some real activity on my part.