GNU sed 4.2.2 released; maintainer resigns

GNU sed 4.2.2 released; maintainer resigns

A criticism to Paolo and GNU TLS former maintainers

I agree with them on their reasons about resigning. But I think that before that they should have discussed these issues with the community in public, and strike our attention.

GNU maintainers should have send an open letter asking for freedom in technical choices. Since GNU receives donations, its policies should be openly discussed.

Well managed organizations are oriented towards results. The president of the university of Princetone does not tell professors how to teach or research. There is no point in telling David Wentzlaf how to teach computer architecture (and he is a wonderful teach, check his free classes in coursera. He knows much better than the president about is area. Then, he must pass evaluations (student surveys, research reports) to ensure the (outstanding) quality of his work, and fire him if he were not performing well.

As former Excel program manager Joel Spolsky explains:

The third drawback is that in a high tech company the individual contributors always have more information than the “leaders,” so they are really in the best position to make decisions. When the boss wanders into an office where two developers have been arguing for two hours about the best way to compress an image, the person with the least information is the boss, so that’s the last person you’d want making a technical decision.