Open Source Project is hard
published on 2019/05/05
I urge the Requests project maintainers to transition their project to a more normal, less dysfunctional governance model. You can acknowledge his contributions without buying into his personal mythology. His insights are not irreplaceable. You know this situation is harming you and your users. You and your users are more important than his ego.
Modern software relies a lot of open source software. This story is specifically related to a popular Python library but the lessons can be learn by all practitioners.
Tangentially related lecture: the hard parts of open source.
Collaborative engineering has more problems in collaboration than engineering. Those 'soft' skillsets do not correlate well with technical expertise, especially when filtered through asynchronous (and often pseudonymous) text-based communication. Additionally, some foundational assumptions about the nature of improving technology and society turn out to not work so good.