Stepping Down

Stepping Down

Postby Branan » Sat Sep 17, 2011 11:17 pm

When I took this job, I had one goal: to foster communication between Cyan, their community, and the Guild. In my short tenure, I've seen the best and worst that the Uru community has to offer... and the slow yet inexorable trend towards less best and more worst.

At this point, Cyan has made it clear that they have no intention of working with the GoW. Beyond that, the Uru community is dwindling - if we're not there yet, we'll soon be to the point where an ambassador for the GoW is no longer needed. I don't want to keep a position that's a relic of bygone hopes and dreams.

I've invested too much emotional energy these past few months, and I haven't gotten a return on that investment. I'm only 22 years old, I shouldn't be allowed to feel bitter. And yet... I'm bitter. Dealing with Cyan and their fans has been taxing in ways I couldn't have begun to imagine before I took this job.

This is a post which I had hoped I would never have to write. I can't tell you all how incredible it was to see the outpouring of support when I was elected. I wish you all the best, and I look forward to seeing the amazing work you all do... with or without the rest of the community.

Shorah,
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Re: Stepping Down

Postby OHB » Sat Sep 17, 2011 11:20 pm

<3 You already know how I feel about this :) Miss ya.
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Re: Stepping Down

Postby Christian Walther » Sun Sep 18, 2011 3:11 am

I’m sorry to see you go, I think you have done a great job. I was often relieved when in the middle of a heated debate your calm yet personal statement brought things back onto firm ground and going forward again. I hope you will continue to be a voice of reason even in a quieter mode and outside of any official position. But I can’t blame you for stepping down – if you couldn’t begin to imagine the burden, then how could I.

I do not see this decline that is lamented all around, and part of the reason for that is the progress you have effected in your position. Thank you, Branan!
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Re: Stepping Down

Postby Chacal » Sun Sep 18, 2011 7:54 am

Christian Walther expressed my sentiment better than I can.
As I don't know about the situation you mention, and do not frequent the irc channel, I can only imagine what events led to your bitterness.
I hope the best for you.
Chacal


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Re: Stepping Down

Postby Jojon » Sun Sep 18, 2011 10:13 am

There is nothing I could possibly add to the eloquence of previous speakers, so I'll have to resort to one of those awful "me too" posts.

Thank you for being a fount of calm and reason, where many would likely have snapped, sooner rather than later.
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Re: Stepping Down

Postby ZURI » Sun Sep 18, 2011 10:38 am

Branan, I'm very sorry to hear you're stepping down. Although it appears the community is dwindling - there are those of us out there with big plans. I guess the mostly-silent ones among us (speaking for myself here) should have been speaking up and participating more in community issues.

Ultimately, I wish you the very best and hope you stick around in some fashion. Please don't give up hope for those who are still developing and working to implement plans and designs - that have been years in the making. We're still out here working hard! Many non-developers just don't realize just how much work this stuff takes!

It's sad that you've had such a bad experience with Cyan and the bad apples in the community. :evil: I still believe they'll be swayed when they realize how much is going on out there "behind the scenes." Either way, thank you for being our spokesperson. :) I've heard nothing but great things about you - and wish things had worked out better.
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Re: Stepping Down

Postby diafero » Sun Sep 18, 2011 1:38 pm

This is definitely a loss for our council - I hope you will still stay around as hacker and continue your work in a less official way, as has been said above.
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Re: Stepping Down

Postby Branan » Mon Sep 19, 2011 9:41 pm

Here is the post I made on the MOUL forum. It's quite a bit longer than my post here, and I'm sorry for that - If the universe played fair, I'd have had a much longer post for the GoW, since I made much more of a commitment here than I did to the general MOUL community. Unfortunately, the issues surrounding my withdrawal from general public development are simply more complex than the ones involved in my resignation as a councilor.

I've decided to stop any and all attempts at integrating my Plasma-related development work with Cyan or the general community. This has been one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make, and I know that many of you will be disappointed by this. Hopefully this post will shed some light on what led to this decision.

I could, honestly, handle the portions of the community that dislike me and what I do. I'm happy to let them live in their bubble, and I'll live in mine. But I see the feuding that goes on here as a symptom.

Cyan has shown time and again that they are unwilling, or unable, to foster a community culture that will help open-source thrive. I believe their hands-off approach to integrating the pre-existing developer groups with the rest of the community has greatly contributed to the current situation on these forums. Their secrecy in the overall plans for open-source has allowed paranoia to flourish, and put people who should be allies on the defensive against each other.

Cyan has also shown a lack of initiative in dealing with issues as they are brought forward. For the past 5 months the company has given no guidance and addressed none of the licensing and contribution concerns that have been raised. It is my opinion that if Cyan had been more communicative about their intentions earlier, many of this problems could have been solved before they became problems.

To cite a specific recent issue: Chogon recently brought up something that I had thought was in the past, or at least being worked past. To find out it was still a major sticking point 6 months later, in a public forum post, is absolutely unacceptable. It shows not just a lack of respect for Adam and myself, but also a willingness to create a situation that would lead to even more infighting in the community.

In the same post, Chogon stated that the official plan for getting open-source contributions to Cyan is through OpenURU, a group with no regular CWE developers. I can only envision two possible outcomes from this. The first is that code never gets reviewed and pushed to Cyan. The second is that the code is pushed without being fully reviewed by people who know the codebase. Neither situation is ideal, and I think it shows a lack of foresight on Cyan's part that this is the path they chose.

I know that my team and I have more than proven our technical ability. What we haven't proven is a willingness to sit down, shut up, and let Cyan do things their way. And if that's what's needed to be able to work with Cyan, I don't see the point of open-source. Uru needs new ideas, new visions, and new minds. The hostility that Cyan and their community show towards those new minds is going to be its downfall.

I'm not killing Uru, neither is Adam or Kaelis. Nalates and Crisger are innocent, too. Cyan is killing Uru, through poor community management and policies that reward doing things their way over fresh ideas, knowledge, and skill.

If the open-source Uru landscape changes, or if I have an opportunity to work with Cyan in a way that gives more freedom to speak my mind and bring my ideas to the table, I will jump at the chance. But I've invested too much emotional energy into the current Uru, with nothing coming back. I just can't give any more. It is time for this journey to come to an end.

I will watch this thread, and do my best to respond to issues as people raise them, but don't expect more than a post or two on any given subject - I don't want this thread to become about one issue when it's supposed to be about many. I will also continue to work on Plasma-related things for my own enjoyment. The engine is still quite an interesting toy, and it has lots of unexplored potential. Whether that work will ever make it in to anything Myst-related is still up in the air. I might even show up in the Fun House now and then - I could never leave Uru completely. My heart will always long for D'ni.


I would ask that anyone who has any commentary on this please post it on the MOUL forum, as I'd like to see my parting words foster some sort of discussion over there. The thread is here. It's here mostly for the sake of those of you who don't frequent that forum.
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Re: Stepping Down

Postby diafero » Tue Sep 20, 2011 5:49 am

That's really sad news. You are a talented programmer, and essentially the last remaining bit of hope that CWE will run without DirectX and PhysX just vanished completely. I have to admit though that I had already almost given up on this before, as activity went down and down here - I just couldn't motivate myself anymore to spend large amounts of time for Uru, and I am under the impression that I am not alone with this feeling. You expressed all that quite well, including the last sentence.

However there is one point where I do not agree: I wouldn't put all the blame on Cyan. Sure, they made a lot of mistakes. But the way the fan community is fragmented into way too many parts also played an important role, and I wouldn't accuse just Cyan for it. For people to work together, a certain will is required on all sites, and that will was often enough lacking, unfortunately.

Now I am aware that me posting this here, and not in the MOUL forums, is exactly the kind of attitude I criticised in the last paragraph. I did not log in to the MOUL forums for years, and did not plan to ever do so again after making nothing but bad experiences there. Then I decided that I can't seriously post above paragraph and still avoid the MOUL forums and expect to be taken seriously, logged in to those forums - and was told that only "users with special privileges" can reply over there. Then I remembered some talk about a user group to join (wtf?), tried that, and got an error message about phpBB not being able to send an email.
So, sorry, but I can't foster any discussion over there, as much as I'd like to.
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Re: Stepping Down

Postby Aloys » Tue Sep 20, 2011 7:19 am

Do you really think that this thread over there will go long without being derailed/flamed/closed? :/
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