A while ago I wrote down a goal on a whim, without really understanding how important it was:

Completely change everything I'm working on in Debian at least once per 5 years.

This goal has really grown on me. And I've seen a good way to accomplish it. I've decided to stop being involved in packaging third party software for Debian.

There's a bunch of reasons, but the overarching one is that I've been doing that for 13 years, and I don't feel it's a very valuable way for me to spend my time any more. I think I've done a pretty good job, but there is not much room for growth. And it's not as if I spend much time on it. In Steve's survey I estimated I spend about 1/30th of my Debian work time on packaging. I won't gain a lot of time by not doing that work, but I'll lose one mental burden, and slim down my areas of responsibility.

I'll take care of passing packages on to appropriate teams, etc, over the next month. This decision leaves me able to continue to work on teams like d-i and the CD team.

I'll also continue to maintain my own software in Debian. Using a distribution as an incubator for new software, with ready-made community, bug tracking, and of course distribution channels, is something that has been a big benefit to my software, and I think also to Debian, and I plan to continue exploring that space.

I'm excited! This is going to be interesting..

discussion