Maintaining my first project: part IV, the end

May 9, 2022 on captainepoch's log

When I volunteered to maintain Husky, I decided to use SourceHut over GitHub, GitLab, or Gitea because SourceHut fits my workflow better. It is extremely convenient. Opening a bug report requires nothing more than an email address. Commenting on an issue requires nothing more than an email address. Contributing code requires nothing more than an email address. You do not need Yet Another Account™ on Yet Another Self-Hosted Gitea™. You just need an email address.

Unfortunately, I have received nothing but grief for maintaining Husky in a manner that suits my workflow. When people mention me on fedi to request a feature or tell me that the app crashes constantly and I ask them to send a bug report or feature request via email, I never get one. Instead, I get a barrage of complaints.

I integrated ACRA to make this process simpler; when Husky crashes, you are prompted to send me an email. Despite the integration, I have received precious few stacktraces and more complaints.

I volunteered to maintain Husky. That means I get to make my own decisions on how to develop the software. I chose SourceHut because it was convenient for me. Therefore, if you want your issue fixed or your feature added, your choices are 1) collaborate with me via email or 2) deal with it until someone else does.

People overwhelmingly choose option 2 - accompanied by more complaints. Because of this behaviour, maintaining Husky has become a major source of frustration and headaches.

… and I am done.

Husky 1.2.0 (email announcement) will be my last release as maintainer. After that, users who want updates will have to maintain it themselves or look for someone else. If another maintainer is found, I will happily certify them as the new maintainer in F-Droid so updates can be distributed through there.

The repository, along the mailing list and the issue tracker, are still available on SourceHut if anyone wants to take a look at them.

The website will be deleted in the coming days and the permissions to send emails and to reply to emails already sent are revoked.

I am not leaving SourceHut. I consider one of the best platforms to host projects, and future projects that I do or maintain will be there.

If you wanted to donate money, find another project to help or give it to a1batross directly; he made Husky possible in the first place and I will be always grateful to him.

I apologise to those who just used Husky in silence or worked with me when asked.

I want to thank amolith (also amolith at misskey) for helping me rewording this a bit better than I did.