[mythtv] Thanks for all the fish!

[Daniel Kristjansson]

I'm guessing most of you have already noticed my absence in the
last 6-7 months. This neatly corresponds to the birth of my son
Henning. Because I've had such a great time working on MythTV and
meeting you all I'd like to actually say goodbye rather than just
fading away. I've been working on MythTV for almost a decade, at
first it was as a break from schoolwork but later it developed into
much more. I've made friends, some of whom I've happily met in
real life, and many more that I'd like to. If I've ever promised you
a pint of beer, be sure that you can take me up on it :)

So why am I leaving rather than just taking a break? It's really about
a wandering interest. It's been a long time since I was interested in
TV as such, but MythTV kept me engaged with the challenges of
writing good C++ code and presenting a stable API in front of
unstable hardware. Even beyond that, I felt part of a community that
cares about the software they are producing. But code and community
can only hold one so long. I haven't yet figured out what my next
hobby programming project will be, but it will probably center around
children or traffic safety.

In the tradition of Eisenhower, I'll offer some advice based on my
own mistakes. First, big rewrites are always a bad idea. Write up the
larger plan on a wiki somewhere but implement the change in
master in easily reviewable bits; just because branching is easy
doesn't make it a good idea. Second, avoid recurring arguments
with newbies by pointing to the previous incarnation of an argument
rather than rehashing the argument; attention is a precious commodity
in an open source project. Third, do occasionally revisit well made
decisions. For instance, this mailing list would probably be better
served by a forum now even though it was entirely the right decision
to make it a mailing list when the project was founded. Fourth, don't
take anyone's advice too seriously.

--
Daniel Thor Kristjansson
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