[Cryptography-dev] pyOpenSSL

[Hynek Schlawack]

Hi,

This is not an easy e-mail for me to write so let's start with the hard part: I'm objectively being a terrible maintainer for pyOpenSSL.

There's many reasons to that.  I have a day job with lots of responsibilities.  I have my own projects like attrs or structlog (which I also let down more often than I care for).    Getting up at 6am on Saturdays to work on FOSS is not enough anymore to catch up with my obligations (and I've had enough of feeling bad for sleeping in on weekends).  pyOpenSSL does all the things I need.

Quite often, I also feel utterly unqualified for that job which leads to dragging Paul, Chris, or Cory into issues and PRs although they never signed up for that crap and I feel bad.

I believe an important package like pyOpenSSL deserves better.  And after two years I'm positive I'm not the person who can deliver that “better.”  I’m highly unlikely to have more time or motivation anytime soon. 

When I took over my plan was to help to lead pyOpenSSL into obsolescence by mostly janitoring and delegating to smarter people.  What happened is that I'm receiving private e-mails I wish I wouldn't and that pyOpenSSL isn't going anywhere – not least due to Python core blocking.

On the bright side, I think I've managed to lead pyOpenSSL into a reasonably good state.  A not entirely horrifying, modern-ish base others can build on.  So I think this is a good moment to start a transition in maintainership.

That said, I have no idea whom to pass the token to.  I don't want to add burden to Paul or Cory who already do way too much.  I want Chris to be able to focus on the stdlib.  I don't think our resident C++ programmer would appreciate that burden.  I just don't know.

I'm certainly unhappy with my legacy here but I'm fed up to live in guilt.

So yeah, there's that.
—h

P.S FWIW, I do not intend to end my involvement with PyCA.  I enormously enjoy working with y'all which is the only reason it took me so long to throw the towel.  But I'd rather be a valuable contributor than a disappointing maintainer.