Hi all!

Since Wikimedia Sverige’s actions are directly pointed out as the cause above I 
feel the need to reply to that part in order to give our view on events.

We took on building the stand-alone .EXE functionality only once you had made 
it clear that you were not interested in taking on this commission, and over 
email in September 2022 asked us to work on it. In no way have we wanted to 
take advantage or misrepresent you, and it pains me that you seem to think that.

We communicated on our implementation of this both on GitHub 
(issue<https://github.com/yarl/pattypan/issues/152#issuecomment-1361324110> and 
PR<https://github.com/yarl/pattypan/pull/173>) and on Phabricator. We got 
feedback from you back in spring about our implementation but have not gotten 
any replies to our questions since then. We interpreted your silence as you not 
wishing to merge our solution, a decision which we respect. To ensure it could 
still be of use to those who wish to use it (incl. the GLAM that commissioned 
it) we therefore host it separately and take on the task of manually syncing it 
to newer releases of Pattypan. In no way should that be considered to entail a 
fork of Pattypan, but rather just an independently maintained download version 
for some Windows users (i.e. just a binary).

Our changes to Commons:Pattypan were intended to be minimal to inform users 
that this new functionality was available without adding any bloat to the page 
or trying to supplant any official links. While I didn’t believe it to be 
necessary at the time I can see now that we could have made it more clear that 
the .EXE distribution was inofficial/independent.

That said…

While it saddens me to see you stepping down I can fully understand your 
reasons for doing so. Maintenance is a largely thankless task, not made easier 
if it is someone else's codebase you have inherited or if it interfaces with 
services that keep changing.

Thank you for keeping Pattypan alive these last 5 years! Doing so has enabled 
countless uploads, the lion's share of which would likely never have made it to 
Commons without your work.

I’d also like to thank you for clearly communicating that you are stepping 
down. All too often maintainers quietly quit, leaving the users in limbo. This 
happens independently of if it is an individual or an organization maintaining 
the software. Your example will hopefully make it easier for someone else 
finding themselves in a similar position.

If you find it valuable I would be happy to talk with you and see how to best 
move forward from here, as I assume that we will have interactions about 
Wikimedia related things in the future.

With respect,

André Costa (WMSE) / Lokal_Profil
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