This series has focused on new projects. I could have said more about significant work that didn't involve starting new projects. A big example was when I added dh to debhelper, which led to changes in a large percentage of debian/rules files. And I've contributed to many other free software projects.

I guess I've focused on new projects becuase it's easier to remember things I've started myself. And because a new project is more wide open, with more scope for interesting ideas, especially when it's free software being created just because I want to, with no expectations of success.

But starting lots of your own projects also makes you responsible for maintaining a lot of stuff. Ten years ago I had dozens of projects that I'd started and was still maintaining. Over time I started pulling away from Debian, with active projects increasingly not connected with it. By the end, I'd left and stopped working on the old projects. Nearly everything from my first decade in free software was passed on to new maintainers. It's good to get out from under old projects and concentrate on new things.

I saved propellor for last in this series, because I think it may point toward the future of my software. While git-annex was the project that taught me Haskell, propellor's design is much more deeply influenced by the Haskell viewpoint.

Absorbing that viewpoint has itself been a big undertaking for me this decade. It's like I was coasting along feeling at the top of my game and wham got hit by the type theory bus. And now I see that I was stuck in a rut before, and begin to get a feeling of many new possibilities.

That's a good feeling to have, twenty years in.