FreeBSD in Trouble Again: WindRiver saga

Guys,
After giving it a fair bit of thought over the last few weeks, I have decided to step down from core. I am doing this for a variety of reasons, any one of which would probably be sufficient grounds in and of its own and, taken in combination, certainly constitute ample justification for doing so:

The first and certainly foremost reason is a lack of time and energy. I simply no longer have the time to devote to doing what I would consider an adequate job of being a responsible core member and the "honorable" thing to do in such case is clearly to step down and let the next election hopefully sweep someone else with more time and energy into the position.

Another reason, and I hate to say this but it probably needs saying, is that being in core is honestly not what it once was. For a old-timer like myself, who was used to a core team that was far more cohesive and generally on the same page, it's simply a painful experience a lot of the time. Perhaps this is due to overly rose-colored recollections of the old core on my part, and I do certainly recall us having more than our share of disagreement and inefficiency in the past, but on the balance core still feels too much like the pre-WWII Polish Parliment sometimes, where we're fully capable of arguing some issue right up to the point where tanks are rolling through the front door and rendering the whole debate somewhat moot. I'm also not blaming this on the democratic model we've adopted, a stance which would be hypocritical at best since I'm one of the folks who argued strongly in favor of it, but I guess it's going to take a few more iterations before we get it right. It will also probably be a lot easier for truly new people who don't have a lot of preconceived notions of what core is to make that happen.

Finally, it also bears noting that while being part of the FreeBSD project is many things, it should always be "fun" to at least some degree for its participants or there's really not much point in being involved. Being in core, where one gets to deal almost solely with conflict resolution and bureaucracy, is not fun in any sense of the word and while being in core constitutes the bulk of my involvement, without any cool development work (which I also haven't had time for) to counter-balance it, it simply leaves me with less and less enthusiasm for FreeBSD. Better to pull the ejection handle now than to let things get to the point to where I'm simply bitter and annoyed ALL of the time vs merely some of the time. :-)

While my time has been very limited lately, I hope to get back to a point where I can start actively contributing to FreeBSD again, and the best place for me to make those contributions is not in core. I would therefore like to officially tender my resignation and request that I be removed from the core mailing list at the earliest opportunity. Thanks!

- Jordan

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