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+Title: qaul: history of a fork
+Category: Blog
+Date: 2021-02-04
+Tags: /dev/diary, qaul
+
+**TLDR:** we're forking qaul.net to [**qaul**](https://qaul.org)!
+This includes myself, and four other developers who have been
+on-and-off working on qaul in their free time over the last year.  We
+have a new domain, have largely rebranded the existing code-base and
+website, and are submitting [Google Summer of Code
+projects](https://projects.freifunk.net/#/projects) to find people who
+would like to contribute code while getting paid.
+
+
+## The background
+
+If you're a regular follower of my work, you may know that I've been
+the lead developer of a project called `qaul.net`, a decentralised
+mesh routing application and app development toolkit.  The project
+itself is not mine and was started around 2011; I joined it in 2016 as
+part of my Google Summer of Code.  But I quickly took over a lot of
+the core planning and development aspects, and even worked on it as my
+full-time research job from 2019 to 2020.
+
+In the summer of 2020, the Open Tech Fund, which was funding
+development on the project, was defunded, and development stopped for
+a few months.  During this time, I was also recovering from some
+health issues, and needed to take a break from the project.
+
+
+## Where things went wrong
+
+Software projects are social entities of the people who work on them,
+not merely technical problems to be solved.  And while I have enjoyed
+my time working on qaul.net, I also feel like I can no longer overlook
+the problems in how the project is organised.  I don't want to talk
+about the specifics, and I won't mention anyone by name.  A lot of my
+issues with the project revolve around how one of the original
+maintainer sees the project itself, and his role compared to others
+who work with him.
+
+Ultimately, social relationships, whether personal or professional,
+need to be rooted in mutual respect and understanding.  Neither of
+those two are the case with regards to the original maintainer in
+question.
+
+Over the last year and a half, I have repeatedly brought up issues
+with him, about his conduct, the way that he approached my work, and
+our interactions, and have tried to engage with him in conversation
+about our working relationship, and how we might improve it.  In all
+of this time, I don't think that I have had a single productive
+conversation with him, as equals.
+
+It became apparent to me, that working with this person would continue
+to negatively affect my mental health, and so I (with the help of some
+amazing friends!) made preparations to fork the project.
+
+
+## Why now?
+
+Initially we were planning to keep this as a very soft fork.  The
+"upstream" project wasn't really doing anything.  Nobody except me was
+putting in code at that time, and it was a happy neutral ground where
+we were prepared to take the project in a different direction, but
+didn't need to force the issue.
+
+Yesterday, the originial maintainer announced that qaul.net had
+received new funding.  He e-mailed me to inform me that he had undone
+a bunch of work I had put in to improve our website and also removed
+my access from most of our infrastructure.
+
+It became apparent that a low-key fork was no longer possible.  So
+instead, we went ahead with some of the final rebranding we had been
+putting off, and are going ahead with the fork.
+
+
+## Why write this?
+
+I want to work or qaul, whether I get paid for it or not.  I'm in the
+fortunate position of being able to put in time on the project while
+doing other jobs, or in between clients.
+
+My main concearn is not having to interact with the orginial
+maintainer in question on a regular basis, and not working in a
+structure which is authoritarily structured around him.
+
+I write this blog post as a warning to anyone who is interested in
+contributing to qaul*.net*, and might have to interact with this
+person as well.
+
+It would make me very happy to see more people engage with qaul and
+getting paid for their work.  I simply fear that people might be
+walking into an abusive situation without being aware of the history.
+And thus...this post.
+
+Ultimately, I'm mostly relieved.  The last attempt to communicate I
+made was back in Novemeber, and since then I had heard next to nothing
+until this announcement.  It is clear to me that my opinions and
+feelings in this matter are not of importance, and so, I feel
+justified to move on.
+
+Thank you for reading.  If you want to learn more about qaul:
+https://qaul.org, and if you want to support my work directly, I have
+a [GitHub sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/spacekookie).