Resignation as Tryton Foundation President and Board Member

Organisation
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Last week, I communicated to the foundation board my wish to resign as foundation president and board member. Here are my feelings that lead me to take the decission:

Nearly one year ago I’ve been elected as foundation president. I was excited about it, i’ve been involved with Tryton for more than 10 years and I enjoyed most of the time spent in the project. I tought this was an opportunity to increase the foundation comunication and try to achieve some tasks to make the project bigger in terms of people working on it.

After this time I just found that this had been my worst year in the project. There had been to much days having discussions. Always trying to fill the differences has cost me so much sadness and some sleep hours. I’m phsicologically exhausted and I no longer feel confortable beeing part of the foundation board.

Probably my fault was that I had and expextation which diverged a lot from the reality. I did my best to hear everybody’s opinion and try to understand all of their motivations and rationals. At the end, what I feel is that we (as community) fail to understand with each other and this causes everyone to fight alone instead of joining forces in common paths.

I joined the Tryton project because I liked the idea to have a real community working together which improves the software step by step. I enjoyed such spirit for ages and it was a pleasure to work hard contributing my efforts on the project but I’m no longer enjoying it. I’m not planning to leave the project but currently I feel pain on every little effort I try to do.

I’ve always been a person who wanted to do. My last effort as president of the board was to publish a yearly recap of income and expense of 2023. When I asked for the bank details of the foundation I got a reply said that they are updated every three months. As always, I’ve offered myself to encode them in a faster period but instead of getting help on moving forward I got unclear replies like for example that we need an accounting auditor role for the foundation server. After 30 days what I understand is that there is no interest on such task, so I will just give up. This is just the last example of how I get exahusted whenever I try to do something for the Tryton project.

It’s very hard for me to undo all the steps i’ve done in the last 12 years. I’ve been thinking about this letter for three months and resisted to write it as much as possible. The more time it passes the more I’m convinced this the only way to continue beeing the joyfull guy I’ve always been. On the other hand, I’m sad to see the tryton project is evolving to a personal project where a single person does everything instead of beeing a real communtiy project.

This is not a goodbye letter and I do not discard proposing myself as board candidate in the future. Lets see how the project evolves and if I can find my joy in it! Count my for any communtiy effort which may try to help the tryton project.

I read you all in the tryton forum and I will continue beeing active in the Tryton en Español Telegram group!

All my best wishes!
Sergi a.k.a. pokoli

P.S: As this post can be edited or removed, I uploaded a copy of the origin message here. Nevertheless I prefer to write it here so others can quote parts of this message and repply to them

6 Likes
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Hi Sergi,

you are not the first one and probably will not be the last one to take a break resp. withdraw for those well understood reasons. Thanks anyway for your work!

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I respect your decision very much and wish you all the best personally. I hope to hear from you in the future.

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Hi Sergi,
I’m sorry to hear it even though I understand your explanation perfectly. I really thank you for everything you have done, and wish you to find your joy again

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Welcome to the club, Sergi. What you describe are mostly the same points that made me not stand up for another period on the Board. All efforts to bring more transparency and turn Tryton to a more community-driven project are blocked.

So I remembered one wisdom…

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

…And took consequences

2 Likes
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Dear Sergi,
thank you very much for giving the Tryton foundation not only your precious time, but also your heart. I very much appreciate your work as the president, especially your constant trying to make the community a better place for everyone. Your questions about why things needed to be done as they are done where important to me. Often I also had these questions. I gave up to ask, but you never did. Your sense for fairness and your mediation abilities were always helpful to reach agreements and common understanding.

Especially your presidency changed my recognition of the foundation from a passive administrative body to an instrument of the Tryton community which actively shapes the future of the Tryton project. In your short time as a president of the Tryton foundation you set standards for the next president. I hope the next one will take the chances and continues to make Tryton a better place for everyone.

2 Likes
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Dear Sergi. I feel very sad when reading your post and your decision.

As I never was very active (because I have no idea of programming), I mainly tried to contribute in an indirect way or via last unconference. And yes, there are a lot of different opinions (as I saw even when discussing simply stuff like “design” last year). But there are ways to go without having the same opinion than others. I also got the impression, that there is quite a lot offending against other meanings in a very direct way so people get sad. On the other hand, Tryton is an international project and when germans get in contact with latin flavoured people, it gets difficult. For heaven’s sake I live on the edge of these two characteristics :slight_smile:

When looking at the “board” from outside, I don’t see a lot I can read about. Now, when reading your post, I tried to find “internal board discussions” and tried to find them here in the “Organisation” category, but I didn’t find a lot. Maybe I’d have to search elsewhere, who knows.

Maybe it was an idea to get out of that board-black-box and bringing ideas, discussions, problems and every day tasks to the “Organization” category so one doesn’t burn out? Please let’s find a way to help you great board guys!

I really love your spirit. I love the way you worked at the last unconference. If you leaved, it was a big loss to me and to the community. Stefan.

2 Likes
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Hi Sergi,

I fully understand your decision seeing what’s going on here on the forum, irc and merge requests and I’m kind of amazed that you took it that long.

I hope you are not burned out because of the strain. I also want to thank you for answering a lot of my (sometimes stupid) questions and hope that you still will be around to do that.

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Hi Segi, I’m very sorry you left the Foundation Bord — anyhow I totally understand your reasons.

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Thanks alls for your loved and harms words. It really make me happy to read such comments :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

The foundation board discussions are done private and once an agreement is reached they are made public using news or organization topic (TBH, I’ve never had been clear which one to use).

The foundation board does not normally take decissions on what is discussed (or announced) on the communication category. At some point, the foundation board does not really “control” what happens in the project organization.

I think this is something a lot of people already assumed but is not (at least currently) the case.

I wanted to clarify such point as this is something that influenced my decission and if that changes in the future that I will reconsider proposing myself as board member in the future.

4 Likes
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Perhaps it was an idea to discuss the way the board is working, find decisions and what the rights and duties are of each “role”? I know, speaking about rights and duties is are not the right way as the board members do not have a “right for deciding certain things”, but it might help declaring some crucial points, so the members don’t feel alone, don’t feel lost and the others can address and help them if necessary? The great work they to should be seen to the people. One should also be able so say “thank you” and that works best when it can be done for a specific subject (programming a great new module as Cedric and all the great contributors do all the time, adding new functions and repairs to existing modules, organizing a wonderful unconference like Richard did last year in Berlin, writing news as Udo does, and so on and so on.

The other ting is, that I read between the lines. As much as I can read there, some people “understand” the decision out of own bad experience. We should not keep that big bad-experience-elephant in the room. What is it about? What can be done to make it better?

Where I live, we have a lot of sportsclubs and sparetimeclubs that work similar to tryton community. Some of the clubs even have business units where people work for money (eg the club I engage for - for free). So if inputs are welcome, I could help and explain this and that about how it could work.

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Something I tried to achieve is to communicate more and make everything more public. This goes in the direction you point here:

I feel this is quite important in a community, but there are some other points that I consider important:

  1. Transparency
  2. Manage expectations (basically to avoid bad experience)

I guess the understanding is because a lot of people have seen me “challenging” the current organization by asking for explanations, proposing changes and having an alternative view on most topics. This caused the bad effect of creating enless discussions and finally ending with my resignation. Please note that this is a big resume to give a full picture, but there are a lot of the details not mentioned in this senteces.

But this was not my goal and it is clear I failed but I guess making it public may help others having similar experiences.

I sincerly do not know how to change and make it better. Currently I seriouly doubt if there is really any interest and change it. What I only have clear is that nothing will change unless:

  1. There is an interest on evolving (I do not see it know)
  2. We all openly discuss, talk more and probably in a regular way
  3. More people takes actions and joins forces

For me any help is welcome but is not me to who such inputs must be shared. Maybe you should propose it to the foundation board or just make a public post on organization where do you resume some points that may be improve the project organization.

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You might be interested to learn that a second member of the board resigned, too: Resignation as a member of board of directors. This makes me very sorry.

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Thanks for your support. Is there any chance of forking the project, sorta like compiere to idempiere?

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That’s the way I go, yes. I intend to push Tryton forward. The idea of making a clean and ultra stable system is good, also if that means work is hard and frustrating sometimes.

Here my start over: The Tryton Foundation

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I am very sorry to hear about your resignation but I am even more sorry to hear that you have been struggling.

Your perseverance and tenacity always astounded me like some superpower, just to now realise you are a regular human that suffers from burn-outs. Joy should be imperative when contributing to a FOSS project. I hope you find again your inner peace as soon as possible so I can be back to the warm feeling of knowing you are one of the most active Tryton contributors.

I am sorry I took you for granted.

Salut!

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Thank you Sergi for all your support with Tryton, I wish you the best in the projects you have ahead.