David A. Harding
Monday, 22 Oct 2007
A long-time contributor to GnuJersey has two requests: that I give the community an opportunity to continue GnuJersey and that I fully explain why I'm discontinuing it. I'll start with why.
The title character in the story The Sorcerers Apprentice finds himself overwhelmed and ruined when he plays with magic without knowing how to stop it. GnuJersey is my magic, and I'm trying to stop it before it ruins my relationships with the GnuJersey bloggers.
A couple years ago, at my last job, I was selected from a pool of 1,200 employees to be the Employee of the Month. It was an honour my boss tempered with a few words in my annual performance evaluation: ``While Dave is always eager to share his viewpoints and ideas, he needs to be aware that opinions from fellow employees are also valuable to the department.'' My parents bought be a T-shirt two months ago that said the same thing more concisely: ``Everything I say is fully substantiated by my own opinion.''
I'm getting better a keeping my opinions private. The improvement stems from my experience of working as part of a team in the New Jersey free software community. Isolation and individualism frame most of my life.
I've learned that the best way to keep my opinion private is to ignore things I disagree with. The blogs on GnuJersey are things I can't ignore. Because people read it, I'm compelled to keep GnuJersey working well. Keeping GnuJersey working well means examining it regularly. Regular examination precludes ignorance.
Completely eliminating GnuJersey will most effectively allow me to cultivate ignorance. I selfishly want this ignorance; I see it as key to reducing contention in my life, and I won't appologise for pursuing it. But I understand continuity for GnuJersey is important. I make the following three offers; they are sorted from most to least desirable to me.
If you feel strongly about any of these options, please contact me.
Again, GnuJersey readers and bloggers have my apologies for this inconvenience.