[Distutils] Who could be lead developer? (was: Colour this bikeshed: Name for setuptools fork)

[Ben Finney]

"P.J. Eby" <pje at telecommunity.com> writes:

> However, AFAIK, nobody qualified for the job of setuptools maintainer
> actually *wants* the position, myself included. (This is not to say
> that such qualified persons do not exist, I'm just saying that I don't
> know of them at the moment.)

Since there are people who have demonstrated significant desire to
continue development of setuptools — heck, they're organising a fork of
it solely because they want its development to proceed — the “wants to”
criterion is evidently satisfied.

So I can only interpret the above as saying that those who have
demonstrated that they want to, are not qualified.

Is that what you're saying? If not, what *are* you saying?

> But lack of qualified volunteers is not me "preventing" anyone doing
> anything.

You are preventing people from continuing development of setuptools *as
setuptools*. That's the main complaint I'm seeing in this discussion,
and your explanation in this latest message reinforces that.

You may have good justification for preventing people from doing that,
but I wish you'd acknowledge that this *is* preventing people from doing
something they've expressed a clear desire to do.

> Obviously, I am not "preventing" anyone from forking it.

Forking is the option of last resort. It's good that we *have* that
option — heck, it's one of the main reasons to prefer free software —
but it's far less preferable than continuance of the project under the
same banner.

-- 
 \      “It's up to the masses to distribute [music] however they want |
  `\    … The laws don't matter at that point. People sharing music in |
_o__)        their bedrooms is the new radio.” —Neil Young, 2008-05-06 |
Ben Finney