<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Oct 22, 2020, at 3:37 AM, Bastien <<a href="mailto:bzg@bzg.fr" class="">bzg@bzg.fr</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class="">lee vinsel <<a href="mailto:lee@themaintainers.org" class="">lee@themaintainers.org</a>> writes:<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">I think Andy's take was the report was "on point but a<br class="">bit boring."<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">Isn't this the very definition of "maintainance"? :)<br class=""><br class="">If I may use this tangent to open a new discussion: how can we change<br class="">the overall perception of maintainance as "boring"?<br class=""></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>To be clear, my ‘take' was tongue-in-cheek. I think Bastien is exactly on the right track - stories are more or less engaging to the extent that authors know their audiences. One should not expect a character-driven drama from a McKinsey report on “The future of maintenance for distributed fixed assets”; just as one should not expect a data-driven assessment of IoT to be published in, say, <i class="">The American Poetry Review</i>. But one beautiful thing about maintenance is that it’s an engaging topic for both audiences (and so many others). The challenge comes in how one frames the discussion. </div><div><br class=""></div><div>A big +1 to Bastien’s last word (below)</div><div><br class=""></div><div>"I strongly believe that we need to tell a different *story* about maintainance - and actually a million ones.”</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Andy</div><div><br class=""></div><div><br class=""></div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div class=""><br class="">I guess it really depends on the fields.<br class=""><br class="">I have recently discovered the "Technical Debt Quadrant", from reading<br class="">this interesting blog post:<br class=""><br class=""><a href="https://somehowmanage.com/2020/10/19/manifestations-of-technical-debt/" class="">https://somehowmanage.com/2020/10/19/manifestations-of-technical-debt/</a><br class=""><br class="">I think each part of the quadrant nicely captures what it means to<br class="">maintain a software (not the service it runs, the software itself):<br class="">the only quadrant you want to find yourself in is the "prudent" one,<br class="">where you only have to "deal with the consequences" (here again, a<br class="">nice periphrase for "maintainance".)<br class=""><br class="">That said, "dealing with the consequences" still sounds negative and<br class="">quasi punitive. You spontaneously represent yourself dealing with<br class="">things retroactively, paying a debt.<br class=""><br class="">BUT, my experience with software maintainance is a bit different.<br class=""><br class="">1. It is more about PEOPLE than "things": a user reports a bug and you<br class=""> fix it, it will help this user, that's motivating. Maintainance in<br class=""> Free software is also all about helping others help you, which is a<br class=""> difficult but interesting skill to nurture.<br class=""><br class="">2. FLOSS maintainance is more about investing than reimbursing. Of<br class=""> course, you may have to literally suffer when you need to do some<br class=""> boring refactoring and dependencies management... but sometimes you<br class=""> are excited by the challenge of redoing things in a better way, and<br class=""> seeing this move as an investment to find yourself in the "prudent"<br class=""> quadrant again.<br class=""><br class="">That's the way I would argue that free software maintainance is NOT<br class="">boring.<br class=""><br class="">What would be yours in your field?<br class=""><br class="">I strongly believe that we need to tell a different *story* about<br class="">maintainance - and actually a million ones.<br class=""><br class="">-- <br class=""> Bastien<br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">Themaintainers mailing list<br class="">Themaintainers@lists.stevens.edu<br class="">https://lists.stevens.edu/mailman/listinfo/themaintainers<br class=""></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></body></html>