I read this blog entry from a hard-working former Gaim developer today. It’s sad, yet so familiar…
I’ve been holding back this blog entry for a long time, but given that I’m not the only one who has been mistreated, now might be a good time to describe what happened to me in what used to be an awesome project. It’s also a way to hopefully clear my name, so to speak, as some have been told some very negative things about me as of late.
As many know, I was a developer on Gaim for many years and wrote a bulk of the framework that it’s made of today. At least for a time, I was respected, and my work was appreciated. At one point, a number of users started messaging me asking why the lead developer or other senior developers were saying such negative things about me behind my back. I wasn’t sure I believed it at first until a trusted friend told me what was said to her about me. It was after that that things took a sharp turn downhill, and while I won’t go into details, it was enough to make me never want to contribute a line of code to the project again. I’ve been informed since that my name is synonymous with crap code, according to a couple senior developers. It was really hard to hear this.
Now, I know this has happened to other people. Users and developers. A number of people in the past who have wanted to contribute to the project have been strongly rejected. I hope I was never the cause of any of that, as I tried to work with most people and help them along. My apologies to everyone out there who has had a bad experience with the Gaim project.
I don’t know what Gaim’s future holds, but in the past year I’ve learned not to care. My work on Gaim has helped me to establish connections in the open source community, and for that I am grateful. It has also helped me to get a job that I absolutely love.
I’ll forever miss the project as it used to be, and hope someday it’ll reach that stage again.
