CFS/ME New Year

[James Richard Tyrer]

This is not about some new software acronym.

That is: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.

Google knows all about this if you are interested.

I have suffered from this for some time but have been considerably worse 
for most of 2007.  I mentioned this casually last month and one of the 
developers wrote me a thoughtful message and suggested that I keep it to 
myself.

I am involuntarily retired because of the illness.  I thought that I 
could, despite being ill, contribute some of my knowledge and experience 
to the KDE project.  But, it has become obvious that this is not possible.

A few people that used to contribute to the KDE project have contacted 
me in private to reassure me that it is the KDE developers and not me 
that has the problem.  To some extent this is true.  I have observed 
other people being attacked and ridiculed for simply expressing their 
ideas or opinions.  This is not a good way to run a project.

There seems to be a lot of ego in this project and it seems to be a 
clique.  For both of those reasons developers seem to feel the need to 
turn what should be reasonable discussions into pissing contests and I 
freely admit that when it starts to go that way that I try to win the 
contest.

Because of my illness I have a tendency to make a lot of errors and 
sometimes I simply think things wrong.  Still my ideas are good and some 
of them might be useful if I was able to explain them.  But, that isn't 
the case.  Developers have ego's and they don't want somebody else's 
ideas even if they are good ones.  People seize on my mistakes and use 
them to ridicule me rather than trying to understand what I have to say 
and discover if there might be something useful in what I am saying.

So, I have reached the conclusion that I am not going to be able to 
contribute to the KDE project any longer.  I am very sad about this. 
But, I see no other choice.  It is obvious that many people don't want 
me to work on the project and now they will have their wish.

In closing I note that I have very much enjoyed working on the project.

-- 
JRT (James Richard Tyrer)
 
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