No, I don't owe you scala-tools.org January 21, 2012
Apparently I'm a jerk for shutting down scala-tools.org. Apparently, I'm an egomaniac for deciding not to sell the domain for "more than $0" even though nobody has made a legitimate offer for the domain. [Note: James Iry asked the question on Twitter. It was a perfectly reasonable question that I answered as best I could in 140 characters. I answered him and there were subsequent posts from others that personally attacked me for not doing things the way they think I should. Posts from others who attacked me for talking about using scala-tools.org to mourn the losses that I see in Scala-land. This post is *NOT* aimed at James. I like James. I respect James. James represents some of the very best of the Scala community and he was one of the folks who energized me about Scala and gave me hope that Scala could be a "local maximum of research and practical in computer langages." I am deeply sorry that James read this post as something about him.]
I plan to transition the scala-tools.org accounts and such to another provider. These plans will be rolled out on Tuesday. There will be ongoing support for a Nexus/Maven repository for the Scala community. The community will continue to have a place to share components.
What I do not have an interest in is selling or transferring the scala-tools.org domain. There is not a way to set a reasonable price for the domain. The domain has value because of the brand built over the last 3+ years of its existence. How do you price that? How do you price the value that the domain has brought to the Scala community as a whole? Whatever I think that monetary value is, it's likely a few orders of magnitude more than others think the value is. It's not even worth, in my opinion, trying to price it.
So, what value does scala-tools.org have to me if not a monetary value? That's up to me. Sorry, to say, but it's my domain. It's something that I've paid for, worked on, recruited others to work on. Yes, there's a conversation to be had with DavidB and Derek for their work over the years. There's less of a conversation to be had with Josh because, while he helped out, he also dropped to ball on the Nexus skills transfer to Indrajit and Lukas which precipitated my decision to close scala-tools after Lukas expressed extreme frustration with being ignored. I also owe some obligation to Indrajit and Lukas for stepping up when I put out the call for help a few months ago.
To the rest of the community, I owe a reasonable transition to a new hosting solution and that reasonable transition will happen.
But for those of you who have some notion that my contribution to the community over the years creates an obligation to continue to contribute, to keep giving, to keep doing unpaid, community service for you, you're not living in reality. The fact that I have given my time and my effort and my cheer leading and my coding and my writing and my servers and time I could be spending with my family (like the first day of my kids' first spring break that I missed because I had to ward off a DoS attack against scala-tools.org and keep the system running) and all of that stuff does not mean I am forever obligated to keep giving my time, my money, my efforts, and the other stuff that I've given in the past.
My life goal is to leave things better than I found them. I feel a fierce obligation to that who have relied on me, and thus when I make transitions, I try to make them gracefully so that there's plenty of time for others to make those transitions.
When I made the decision in late May to do my next startup, http://visi.pro, in a language other than Scala and on a platform other than the JVM, I made sure to have a graceful transition of leadership in the Lift community and I continue to support Lift and the Lift community because I owe an obligation to those who adopted Lift.
When it became clear that Josh and Derek were not going be able to continue to support scala-tools.org, I put out a call for more volunteers. Given that I was phasing out of the Scala community, I could have just shut scala-tools.org down then. But I asked for help and worked on a transition.
But now, now when it's clear that it's time to shut scala-tools.org down, there's plenty of "you should do this," "you should do that." Well guys, where were you when I put out the call for help a few months ago? What has changed that would make you capable of making scala-tools.org work now?
More importantly, what gives you the right to insult me personally for making a choice about something I own and something I contributed to mightily? If you wonder why I'm sad about the state of the Scala community, just read my blog, watch my Scala Lift Off London keynote.
My way of working through my sadness about opportunities lost, my way of mourning these losses will be expressed on scala-tools.org. I will use something I had a mighty hand in building to express sadness about what could have been.
Will this cause some inconvenience? Maybe. Will this raise awareness about the issues holding Scala adoption back in a way that I've been unable to do in other ways? Maybe. Is this my choice? Yes. Do I owe you more than a smooth transition to another domain and another provider? No. Do I owe you scala-tools.org? No.