OMG, really? I totally missed this memo. I guess we *have* to move. We should probably all run Windows too, right? Yay monoculture! :)
I stand by my original paragraph, which you chose to snip. Being snide and sarcastic about it doesn't lessen the truth of it.
So why are you here? Just heckling and hoping that someone else will get
the project to the point where you're willing to contribute? This is my general hesitancy to move stuff just because someone shows up and says "If only this project used tool X, then I'd contribute." The opinions of people who have actually contributed meaningfully weigh much more on me than those that haven't.
Message received. If contributing a driver for a new radio (IC-910H) and a fix for broken functionality (Icom auto-detect), and providing constructive commentary on other contributions via the mailing list is not considered meaningful, then your question is certainly a good one - what am I doing here?
I had thought that I could provide input that might prove beneficial to a discussion on the future of a project that I consider worthwhile, and of great benefit to many hams, but that I also consider to be in trouble with regard to moving to a more current version of Python. As for doing the work, open source is almost always about scratching an itch. Contributing to discussions is usually considered part of that.
Moving to a new language and toolchain requires people that *have*
contributed a lot to change, it requires me to change my build environment, and other knock-on impacts. Obviously I want it to just magically be current, but that involves a lot of work on my part, and even though might be great if it meant more contributors, it's still work.
Building a team around Chirp would, in my opinion, benefit the project greatly. To my knowledge - and certainly I could be wrong here, since much is not visible - you are the only committer, and everything has to either be done by you or go through you. That is obviously going to make it feel like the world is on your shoulders. By creating a team of trusted collaborators over time - likely from your list of meaningful contributors - you could spread the load. More could potentially get done, and you wouldn't need to be, or feel like, a bottleneck, since others could pick up the slack when you need some down-time.
Martin. KD6YAM