Passing the baton

[Sean Egan]

Pidgin developers,

I've been maintaining Pidgin since early 2002 (my first release as a
co-maintainer was 0.52 on Feb 17). I've worked on a ton of great
stuff, learned a whole bunch, became a published author and president
of a corporation, negotiated a legal settlement with a major
corporation, met a *ton* of great people, and have had way too much
fun. It's time to give other people that same chance. :)

I'm ready to pass the 'maintainer' baton over. I've already talked
about this with all the other developers (hopefully I didn't miss
anyone!), and Mark Doliner is the favorite to take the reins. Mark's
afraid he doesn't have the time to serve as a 'lead developer' role
anymore (a sentiment I totally understand), and so he'll serve more as
a "maintainer," while Daniel and Sadrul are more 'lead developers.'
I'll allow Mark to follow up on it, if he wishes.

I'll stay on as President of IM Freedom at least until the next board
election (next month), as that is a pretty low-effort position. I'll
also stay on as a casual developer, finally finishing some of my
bigger projects I've been working on (i.e. WebKit) and maybe finding
time to work on others (Guifications merge!). I'll probably take a
week or two off first, though. In fact I'm flying to vacation in New
York tonight. ;)

In practicality, I don't expect very much will change; I've been less
active than I should be for some time, and everyone else has already
been doing a great job of picking up the slack. And even when I am
active, the project largely runs itself; we typically get by great on
sheer consensus. I know Mark, Daniel, and Sadrul will all do great
jobs.

Thanks everyone, for such an amazing experience!

-Sean.