Collective Imagination

In 1994, I created a free version of DOS, a system compatible with MS-DOS but open for others to use and improve. This became the FreeDOS Project. Since then, I have been tightly integrated as the project's primary coordinator/maintainer.

Yet in February 2009, I decided to leave FreeDOS. This was not an easy decision. After 15 years, FreeDOS was a large part of my life, and I had invested a lot of my time and energy to the project. However, I had applied for a Master's degree program, and realized my studies on top of home life and work commitments would leave little (or no) time for FreeDOS.

In part 3 of this series of blog posts, I discussed how the maintainer can help a project thrive. The maintainer plays an important role in an open source software project. For the FreeDOS Project to to survive, I needed to transfer my role to someone else.

So the question is, How to transition these responsibilities to someone else?

Communication is key

"Transition" is really about change. The first step in making a change is communication. So, on February 8 2009, I emailed the FreeDOS mailing list with a note that I would be leaving the project:

Just wanted to let everyone know that I've decided to pursue a
Master's degree (M.S. - MOT). This will require a considerable time
commitment from me, for the next two years. In order to concentrate on
the course, I'll need to take a leave of absence from the FreeDOS
Project starting in May.

I know FreeDOS will be fine during my absence. We have the FreeDOS
Wiki to help manage our user-contributed documentation. Bug tracking
has moved from bugzilla to the SF Bug Tracker. I'm not the only person
with access to the FreeDOS files archive at ibiblio, nor the only
person who can edit the http://www.freedos.org web site.

I'm sure others will be able to fill in for me while I'm gone, so my
absence isn't really that critical.

Importantly, this was my first communication regarding the transition. It's not a coincidence that the email clearly reminded people that others already held the same roles as myself (files archive, web site). If the community stepped up, my exit would not be disruptive for FreeDOS.

In fact, the response to my message was relative calm. Many wrote to express their thanks for having built up the FreeDOS Project, others emailed with general support and encouragement. But no one complained that FreeDOS would "die" - people realized I wasn't irreplaceable, and we would make the transition in time. After all, I made my announcement more than 3 months in advance of my departure.

Understand the roles

It seems a basic concept, but worth saying anyway: in order to transfer responsibilities to someone else, everything needed to be documented. A few days after announcing my exit, I began writing down everything I worked on: web site, files archive, mailing list, project admin, etc. From there, I documented my tasks within each role, and (where possible) included a history so the next guy would have some context.

The FreeDOS Project has a wiki, so I captured everything there, adding links to other sections. The next few weeks were a flurry of writing "how to" notes and chronicling the history of various minutia.

Just do it

After a few weeks, several people volunteered for various administrative duties on the FreeDOS Project. My documentation removed the mystery from the daily tasks kept FreeDOS running smoothly.

For example, Rugxulo offered to be a news editor, posting announcements about new development in FreeDOS programs. When Rugxulo made his first news post on February 26, I backed off and let him take it for his own.

I realized the hardest step wasn't writing that email in February. It was when I made my first hand-off to someone else on the web site. A handoff isn't real unless the first person stops doing it. So while I wanted to keep posting news, it was important for me not to, to let the next person take it from there.

Even more difficult was not meddling. People learn best when they can discover things on their own. Rugxulo's first few posts were not written in the style I would have used - but this was his responsibility now, and he needed to figure out his personal style on his own.

From my experience, this is the hardest thing for any long-time project maintainer to do during a transition. Announcing your departure is one thing; doing it is something else. That takes strength of will.

Let it go

During the next few months, I was pleased to see so many people from the FreeDOS community come together in support of the transition. The news handoff went well, so people volunteered to take on other roles. Pat Villani (author of the FreeDOS Kernel) returned to become the new coordinator of the project. By May, I was acting solely as an adviser.

But at some point, you need to really let it go. So, difficult as it was, I wrote a final note to the FreeDOS mailing lists to announce that the transition was complete:

Back in February, I had announced that I was taking an absence from the FreeDOS Project to focus on an MOT program, effective in May. I've been transferring my roles in FreeDOS (webmaster, SourceForge admin, ibiblio admin, etc.)

May is finally here. I'm going to unsubscribe from the mailing lists,
and officially take my leave from FreeDOS. It's been a long
transition, but I think it's been a smooth one. With the support
structure we have in place now, I think FreeDOS will do just fine
without me running things. For example, Rugxulo has been regularly
posting news updates to the web site, and others have been updating
ibiblio.

Any emails that are sent directly to me will be forwarded to one of
the other admins. I'll probably still post items to my FreeDOS blog
but I'm now out of the day-to-day running of
the FreeDOS Project.

I've worked on FreeDOS since that day in 1994 when I posted a note to
the comp.os.msdos.apps newsgroup to announce a new, free version of
DOS. Since that time, we've seen FreeDOS "grow up", marking our
official "1.0" release in 2006. Today, FreeDOS is used all around the
world, in a variety of industries. Embedded systems have found FreeDOS
to be useful, and classic gamers are able to run their old DOS games
on PC hardware. I look forward to what FreeDOS 1.1 (and an eventual
FreeDOS 2.0) will bring.

It's been great. Thanks to everyone! :-)

And that was it. I missed being involved in the project, but I wasn't concerned about its future; I had handed over the keys to others, and built up an active community of user-developers.

They say the final responsibility of an open source software maintainer is to hand off the project to someone else. It's a hard step, that final transition. But it's important for the project to survive on its own. And more importantly, it's possible.