Kaya

Thank you for the other side of the story.

Outcome is a tool was modified at the behest and funding of one GLAM, I have no issue with GLAMs funding tool development, and appreciate there is a dire need to do so. They are happy and maybe it might help others. This whole thing failed because Pattypan wasnt a tool used by one glam, or even one community; it is being used globally by many different communities and individuals. Now Commons has yet another tool not being maintained; the whole community will be worse for it. Talking on Github[?] or even in Phabricator just doesn't make any sense when there is a whole project(which by the way serves every project) its global user base relying on the goodwill and efforts of volunteers.

Some of the concerns could have been solved by a simple message to the Commons community the explain what is happening, how this tool has been changed and any impacts on the future of pattypan

The question is how is this going to be fixed, who is going to take responsibility for Pattypan fixing any bugs and upgrading it as needed.

On Fri, 22 Sept 2023 at 21:05, <andre.costa@wikimedia.se> wrote:

Hi all!

Since Wikimedia Sverige’s actions are directly pointed out as the cause above I feel the need to reply to that part in order to give our view on events.

We took on building the stand-alone .EXE functionality only once you had made it clear that you were not interested in taking on this commission, and over email in September 2022 asked us to work on it. In no way have we wanted to take advantage or misrepresent you, and it pains me that you seem to think that.

We communicated on our implementation of this both on GitHub (issue<https://github.com/yarl/pattypan/issues/152#issuecomment-1361324110> and PR<https://github.com/yarl/pattypan/pull/173>) and on Phabricator. We got feedback from you back in spring about our implementation but have not gotten any replies to our questions since then. We interpreted your silence as you not wishing to merge our solution, a decision which we respect. To ensure it could still be of use to those who wish to use it (incl. the GLAM that commissioned it) we therefore host it separately and take on the task of manually syncing it to newer releases of Pattypan. In no way should that be considered to entail a fork of Pattypan, but rather just an independently maintained download version for some Windows users (i.e. just a binary).

Our changes to Commons:Pattypan were intended to be minimal to inform users that this new functionality was available without adding any bloat to the page or trying to supplant any official links. While I didn’t believe it to be necessary at the time I can see now that we could have made it more clear that the .EXE distribution was inofficial/independent.

That said…

While it saddens me to see you stepping down I can fully understand your reasons for doing so. Maintenance is a largely thankless task, not made easier if it is someone else's codebase you have inherited or if it interfaces with services that keep changing.

Thank you for keeping Pattypan alive these last 5 years! Doing so has enabled countless uploads, the lion's share of which would likely never have made it to Commons without your work.

I’d also like to thank you for clearly communicating that you are stepping down. All too often maintainers quietly quit, leaving the users in limbo. This happens independently of if it is an individual or an organization maintaining the software. Your example will hopefully make it easier for someone else finding themselves in a similar position.

If you find it valuable I would be happy to talk with you and see how to best move forward from here, as I assume that we will have interactions about Wikimedia related things in the future.

With respect,

André Costa (WMSE) / Lokal_Profil
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