I would agree with you if I had not spent the past several months trying to get this fixed politely and failing, and even trying not being polite about it and failing. It would be a lot easier if it were as simple as people lacking empathy rather than deeper structural issues that those in power don’t want to face head on. The non improvement on these structural issues due to a lack of will (or lack of understanding them) and lack of willingness to let go of power and let someone else do it, as well as the need to gather essentially unlimited consent to do anything because we have unclear constituency such that someone will complain no matter what (and you don’t know who you can just ignore), that is what you’re seeing here.
You’re seeing the effects of five years of governance debt, of what happens when progress like rfc98 gets chased out (by some of the very members of the current assembly, which does not lead to optimism), what happens when process doesn’t get reformed because the people with the power to reform it get stalled in rfc, don’t delegate, or plainly don’t have the legitimacy to get away with improving things. And so people leave.
There will be a distro tomorrow, and next week, and probably next year. It just may have entirely different people working on it after unforced errors and too many second chances. And I’m not sure what’s going to happen to the already overburdened maintainership after most who wanted serious reform to reduce that burden walked out the door. Maybe a true crisis will force the actions we have been pushing for for ages.
But ultimately that’s not my problem because I tried, honestly, harder than I could, and I failed (and my friends receiving death threats is the cherry on top, as backup to stop me shoving my hand in the sausage machine again). So that’s that, I’m not putting more emotional energy into it. Nor are many people I know. I’ll work on a different project where I feel like I can accomplish change.