[HCoop-Discuss] The End?

[Adam Chlipala]

In August, I posted a message suggesting that I would be leaving HCoop 
admin/planning responsibilities very soon if there weren't signs that 
other people were working to take over the responsibilities assigned to 
me.  (I was/am willing to continue [still temporarily] with Domtool 
admin, since I have special knowledge of the tool; and treasurer duties, 
since I'm set up with official bank account access.)  Frankly, there 
have been no signs that this has happened, and I think someone with less 
of an emotional commitment to HCoop would have packed up and left already.

A few people have volunteered to take over facilitating decision-making, 
but no one has followed through.  It's the "herding cats" element that's 
most critical here.  The crucial contribution that I've tired of making 
is organizing people to make decisions and get work done in reasonable 
time frames.  Upon volunteering to do this kind of organization, the 
volunteer is invariably surprised to see that merely starting a mailing 
list thread is insufficient to get a decision made.  Where I have always 
kept pushing on people to make progress, the recent volunteers for this 
role have just faded away into silence.  This is understandable; it's a 
thankless role, and I can see why people would want to avoid it.  
Nonetheless, we need to accept that HCoop is over unless we find some 
way to make decisions without using me as the operating system.

I sent out my first plea of this kind about four months ago, and the 
critical issues are still "languishing in the mailing lists," waiting 
for some imaginary consensus decision-making process to produce final 
plans.  We at least managed to fix the mire Apache DoS problems, but 
that turned out to have a simple software solution, of the kind that 
geeks have no problem organizing to implement.

So, what do you want to do?  (I think it's important for me to finally 
stop writing "we" in connection with HCoop, because that can only lead 
people to keep assuming I'll shoulder the same recurring burden.)  I 
have to admit that I'll be skeptical of any offers to take over 
people-organizing responsibilities, but I still feel like giving people 
a chance to offer.