No More Gentoo-flavoured s.herbert

A few people have talked about Stuart’s departure already. And I didn’t read any of the planet yesterday, when I posted.

So that means it’s been 2 days since his official announcement, and I’ve been suspiciously quiet about it 🙁

Well, no longer. A few of us knew Stuart was going to retire a little bit before his resignation from the board. I will be honest here: I did not even try to talk Stu out of it. I wanted to. I felt the pain of his leaving pretty strongly. Over the years, however, I’ve learned a little bit about him, and so I knew that I’d not make a dent in his decision. He didn’t resign in a fit of rashness or anger. He’s most certainly exasperated/frustrated and probably a little angry, yes. But his action was not impulsive. It was thought-out. His mind, what I’m getting at, was made up. And nothing I or anyone could say or do was going to change it. So when he confided his intention to me, I could but accept what I was hearing.

And, in a way, seeing him resign took some wind out of my own sails. I guess, ladies and gentlemen, that that made Stuart one of my rocks in Gentoo. I need not paint a picture of Stuart, because anyone who’s used Gentoo for a few months will recognise his work. He was an integral part of the overlays project, the Seeds project, the webapps team (which includes apache and its sexy configuration, and php which is not so sexy, but that’s just me), and a lot more.

The thing about Stu is that he always tried to build and mend bridges. He had this uncanny ability to swallow pride and make the first steps to peace. He’s human, of course, and so he’s not perfect, but I’ll tell you this: if 80% of Gentoo developers did that, we wouldn’t see as many dismal and sad blog posts on this planet.

He’s going to continue the Seeds project as much as he can outside of Gentoo. And there’s certainly a fair share of us who will champion it within. So my tiny comfort is that at least Stuart Herbert is still involved, in some way, with Gentoo.

Farewell, Stu.