Pay a consultancy to maintain?

[Frijol]

For discussion @tcr @HipsterBrown @rwaldron what do you think about paying a shop (https://www.stackbuilders.com/ for instance... or, like, bocoup) to put in a few hours a week on just maintenance? We have the funding to do this at the moment.

[papb]

Hello, I was about to ask about the current status of this project, then saw this issue. Sorry if I'm getting offtopic, but now I'm interested in this discussion 😬

I remember when I first heard of Tessel a few years ago, it looked really nice, and today I thought of finally buying one, but at the GitHub readme I see:

The Tessel Project has the following goals for September 2017 (our next Tessel Summit)

Which is clearly outdated :(

So how have things been going since then? Should I still buy one? 😬

[Frijol]

It's a good question! We haven't been very active as a maintainer community, but our stuff still works & is open source (so if you do encounter an issue you can fix it/update).

[papb]

@Frijol Thank you :) I will probably buy one in the near future then!

[slomobileAdmin]

My question is the same as @papb fast forward to September 2020. Tessel.io highlights 2 distributors. Seed Studio is out of stock on Tessel 2 and Sparkfun has 6. Is that due to high demand or ceased production? I really don't know because I just got here.

our stuff still works & is open source (so if you do encounter an issue you can fix it/update).

For someone just getting started with Tessel, I cannot "fix it/update" if I need out of stock hardware or there is no one left to write patches for the changing software environment. One person is seldom able to do it themselves even if open source theoretically grants them the ability. That is practically the Seed Studio and Sparkfun business model.

Other developers can jump aboard to take up the mantel if they are aware of the need. You've done a great job documenting how new contributors can help. Are those docs still valid absent leadership, or are new contributors wasting their time because they lack access to key resources? People are still finding Tessel for the first time. Due to Covid people are setup to develop at home. Tessel still looks like a great project because of all the work you put in. That is a valuable resource that can be cultivated, again. What do you want to say to a potential developer that finds this project today?

If its, "we are tired and have moved on to more profitable things", that is fine. But could you offer a few words of encouragement, hand over the keys, or just give notice to those that would pick up the torch.

[Frijol]

Hi, thanks for your note! It's really nice to hear; from where I'm at, I don't necessarily find out if Tessel gets purchased or used, so it makes me smile to find people still discovering it.

As you've noticed, we're not spending a lot of time on Tessel – I can't speak for everyone but I have largely moved on. That said, the steering committee members & our foundation backer are still somewhat around on an "if something urgent comes up" type of basis. And we haven't totally let go, because we, too, still think Tessel is kind of special.

Re what to say to new contributors– I'm excited you're interested. I'd encourage you to poke around in our docs (they should still be up to date, but what's more, a good issue asking clarifying questions is very likely to get answered). If you get really excited and want to keep the project going/update it/approach new ideas, that's something we'd be very excited about. We even have some pretty solid old plans for the project's continued development/progression if that's something you would want to pick up. I think most of us still have the Slack, even.

For a bit of specifics – there is a small amount of base maintainership going on, we're still fiscally sponsored, there's actually a couple of avenues for project income. Our open governance model has mostly ceased to be effective, more or less because the steering committee stopped meeting/also we didn't hear from our community very much so it felt pretty solo. In the last year, we've met a couple of times but failed to take notes. We've discussed a couple of options on long-term direction & maintenance of the project, but none of it has concretized (which doesn't mean it never will). But also in the last week, we worked with Seeed to help them fix their broken manufacturing test rig in China, which might help with the out-of-stock situation. So– my take is that Tessel isn't anybody's top priority, but it doesn't take a lot to get us excited again. There's some precedent for community members showing up and contributing and that bringing energy back to the group as a whole.

My biggest concerns for the project are (a) hardware becoming unavailable, which based on the recent Seeed interaction seems like it's ok right now, and (b) getting really out of date with software, especially Node and USB drivers (not sure how we're doing on that right now, but if yours is working then that seems ok too).

Hope that helps! You're welcome to dive in, and we're proud to be the kind of community that welcomes questions and new contributors. We even have some funds in case you start contributing to the project and realize you need some specific hardware or something. But I can't promise much time support, so it's a lot to try and pick up. Just know that you're welcome here.