Avenjing the Departure

I hate writing these. What I mean is that I hate having to write them. What I mean by that is that I wish people I care about (not only because they’ve become friends, but also because of the tremendous value they’ve brought to Gentoo during their time here) would stop leaving.

Yesterday, Jon Portnoy (aka avenj) announced his retirement from the project.

Jon came to us via the #gentoo IRC channel. In fact, if there’s a perfect way to become part of a project, then Jon’s execution is the exemplar of it. A few of us noticed Jon being generally helpful in #gentoo. He spent time with helping new users, and he spent time defusing volatile arguments among users, and he had mad irc skills. So, one day, we’re all just hanging out in there (I think the channel was less than a hundred strong at the time), when we get DOS’d by a someone (or some people?). You know, it’s basically a join/part bomb. Anyway, avenj had experience with IRC, so he was telling me what to do to protect the channel. It was easier to just give him the wheel and let him drive, so that’s what I did. And so Jon became the first ever non-gentoo developer to have Operator status in the main support channel.

I thought it’d be a good idea to just keep him as ops, and so for a while that status quo was maintained. As we started talking and exchanging ideas, he expressed interest in the ICC compiler. He also became a confidant with respect to the “developer relations” type issues I was looking at (Gentoo had started the growth spurt and devs were hopping aboard fairly quickly, as was the number of users). Anyway, after Jon helped me shoot a few bugs in packages I was maintaining, and giving suggestions to the then-current ICC maintainer, we decided we better just get out of his way, and so we did.

Now, I didn’t find out till Klieber told me in NYC that Jon was, in fact, 14 or 15 or something. Either way, he had the honour of being our youngest developer ever (I think cybersystem took that honour a little later, and probably someone else carries the title these days). So anyway, everyone was always impressed at how mature Jon is, and how well he handles himself in fiery situations.

Because of his even-keeled disposition, and interest in people, he became more involved in the “developer relations” issues. Finally, when the metastructure project came to be, and Developer Relations became its own top-level project, the natural choices to run it were Jon and I. I’ve never ever thought of it as me being Jon’s boss or whatever stupid hierarchies might exist. I saw in him, my partner in crime. We each had roles, but I can say this — devrel became as successful as it did (yes, it actually is a success, even if a tiny amount of vocal people are very critical of it) because of the work Jon and I put into it. When I retired from DevRel, Jon led it for a year, and then gave the helm to his co-lead, Deedra, and then she to Ferris (fmccor), and he to Bryan (kloeri).

Anyway, in the beginning two years, devrel was a fairly quiet place. As we saw the need to formalise a few things, Jon took the initiative on those things. He developed the intial recruitment guidelines, for example. And the latest iteration of the policy is actually largely his work as well.

Jon’s probably just moving on in life, as well he should. I hope that someday soon, he and I will have the chance to work together gain. As always, Jon, I wish only the best for you. Here’s hoping all your dreams are realised.

Take care, my friend.