The Software Maintainer's Pledge
Repeat after me: "I won't break your user experience."
I won't break your user experience.
- I won't remove features.
- I won't remove features by pretending to "upgrade" them.
- I won't break anything that lives in your muscle memory.
- I won't force you to update your configuration.
I won't break your user experience, even in a nice way.
- I will make the UI tell you what changed at the right time.
- I will make the UI ask you whether you accept new defaults.
- I will provide simple tools to update your configuration.
- I won't force you to read stuff you don't want to read.
If I break your user experience, I won't give lame excuses.
- I won't use semantic versioning as an excuse.
- I won't use software correctness as an excuse.
- I won't use potential features as an excuse.
- I won't lecture you.
So, who's in?
Inspired by years of maintaining Org Mode, all Rich Hickey's talks and Brian Goetz's talk "Stewardship: the Sobering Parts".
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