One of the hardest things is often to know how to react to people when they offer help. I don’t think it matters much where you are involved or what arena it concerns, reacting in an appropriate manner when someone tries to be helpful is hard. The wrong word, the wrong attitude and you can send a powerful , unintended message that will have lasting effects. Especially if you’re tired or communicating via IM or email.

I’ve been both a recipient and a supplier of this sort of behaviour, and both positions should be avoided 🙁 Sometimes it’s hard to know when you’re approaching the line, but most of the time a moments thought before engaging mouth or keyboard will avoid such problems.

The stuff I’ve been doing recently towards the ASF is now starting to reach the point I intended it to get to – the point where I can start to back away and regain my free time that has recently been devoted to it. As I near that point I’ve been looking back and contemplating. Always a dangerous thing to do! What I have seen has been interesting. Probably the biggest thing to take away is that I have no real stomach for “turf wars” or people who work to create empires. I just can’t be bothered with all the to and fro that surrounds such people and their endeavours. This means that I’m not going to get involved in anyting related to this sort of people again.

I’m looking forward to being able to spend some more time on the projects I put aside to finish the ASF bits and pieces I’ve been doing. The main achievement has been the creation of http://projects.apache.org/, which while far from completed is at least working and heading in the direction I intended to take it – something I wish could be said for all the projects I’ve been involved with!