Ernest, the lead dev for Kbin, has had a lot of big events happen in his life recently, so he has a tendency to just kinda disappear for weeks/months at a time while the project gets put on hold. He'll usually come back, announce new plans for development, maybe push out a few updates, and then inevitably go radio silent again.

I believe he's got a few people assisting him now, but development has definitely slowed to the point of becoming concerning. I think it might be time for the Mbin team to start getting a little more free with the fork.

it might be time for the Mbin team to start getting a little more free with the fork.

the impression i had of mbin was very “anything goes” did that not end up being how things shaped up??

That was the message that was pushed out when @melroy started the fork, because a lot of people were not particularly fond of the way he did it. We were trash talked a lot in the first months and obviously (and sadly) that kinda stuck on a lot of people.

I did the fork in the best way I could think of. Including a very detailed Collective Code Construction Contract for contributors: https://github.com/MbinOrg/mbin/blob/main/C4.md

I’ll never fully understand why humans are so quick to judge and offer non-constructive criticism on someone else’s creative work. It seems like the least knowledge are most often the loudest in this regard.

Communication is difficult, especially over text, and emotions can get strong as there is a lot of work involved. Software developers are not always the greatest diplomats. Well-intended constructive feedback is often read as criticism, and situations escalate. And for whatever reason people love picking sides.

At least Mbin seems like a healthy project now, and since Kbin.social went down for good it's hard to argue a fork wasn't needed. Hopefully Ernest is alive and recovering well - he did us all a huge service by creating Kbin and making it open source.