I can tell you I am kindred spirit in the sense that I have lived long enough to know what it is I want in/from a software project and won’t accept second best. The “unbeliever” in your words.

I will also tell you I am a third sort of person. I subscribe to several messaging / bus / networking forums because I have a morbid curiosity about the technology. I have rolled a couple of my own such libraries, or have been involved on projects that included said technology. Having done so would think twice before adopting such a library not least of which since so much of my livelihood potentially depends on it.

I fall somewhere in the middle of purist thinking I believe. Call it a moderate passion for software craftsmanship, which is most definitely people and service minded first followed closely by honing one’s technical skill.

I did interact with Garrett briefly throughout this ordeal. And will be clear that as far as I am concerned no one was twisting anyone’s arm to participate, contribute, much less demonstrate leadership capacity. We’re all adults and know the cost being willing to do so, or not. We can claim we were nominated if elected, but at the end of the day there is a personal responsibility.

Anecdotally, I have similar experience with a project called Automapper. I submitted a PR that would radically change it from being “static” to instance based. The result of which, my work was shelved for months, and when pressing the author whether I should wait for months more, received a b/s response, contrary to the weeks of discussion he and I passed back and forth leading up to that. He knows who he is and what was discussed, the details of which aren’t important here.

I took that to mean, simply, I wasn’t asking his permission whether my contribution was viable. It would serve my needs then, now, in the future. So I forked and forged out on my own with Micromapper. Ultimately I will use my fork, but the library is but a part of a much greater whole, so I care not to get that invested.

The funny part is that Automapper has now chosen to adopt my contribution, in philosophy, if not also partially in implementation. The author did attempt to reach out to me, but having read his retort correctly as a semi-major setback, believe that I made the right decision. It was either that or live with it, which frankly at the end of the day I loathe being that beholden to any man.

I took a moderate approach initially and replaced the static bits with instance friendly ones, but with the express intent to obsolete and eventually remove the static ones entirely. Now that Automapper has moved perhaps Micromapper will as well. A little friendly OSS competition isn’t a bad thing IMO.

Anyway thanks again for the thought provoking blog.

Where I cannot follow is your section on hostility. The quotes do not seem hostile to me. A rejection is not necessarily hostile. Can you clarify that?