One trait that I’ve found most of the people working on open source share is that they find it hard to let go. I’m guilty of this myself, but have, over the years, found that it’s a neccesity if sanity is to be preserved!

When you start a project you have a firm vision of where it’s headed. You beaver away, working and over time you mould it to your vision. The vision may change, but it’s still your vision. At some point this, sadly, becomes a problem. With a group of people working on a project things will not always agree with “your vision”. The direction of the project now needs to be moulded and controlled by the group, not by a single mind. It’s not always an easy transition, especially if the collective direction differs from your own.

Having invested your time and effort into any such emerging and growing project it can be hard to cope with this transition. It’s easy to become a roadblock to further progress, rejecting all new ideas that don’t fit within the “bubble of your vision”, abandoning logic and reason in favour of dogma.

I suspect that, if honest, most of us have been on both sides of this situation. Presently I find myself in such a position with projects.apache.org. Having worked hard to get it off the ground it’s now been taken over and moved on by others – largely without my input. I find myself rewriting every email I send related to the project in order to avoid sounding too negative or dismissive of the effort s now being applied. I’m likely not doing a good job!

It’s strange and slightly awkward, but I know it’s all part of the process that the projects site needs to undergo to be viable in the longer term. It won’t last forever.