The Fork
Hrm, I hadn’t expected Bryce to actually get into the events around the Inkscape fork itself. I’d been thinking more along the lines of just how we all got involved in Sodipodi.
Since he did so, however, I should note that things actually started to go south in April 2003, several months before Hydra.
What happened was that Lauris unilaterally announced that Sodipodi development was halted due the Iraqi War and sabotaged the Sodipodi website.
Most of the developers also opposed the war, but they did not agree with these actions. Although the final breakdown would not occur for almost six months, the fork became inevitable when we resolved to continue development with or without Lauris.
Personally, I think external politics have no place in Open Source projects; projects generate quite enough of their own as it is.
However, the real take-home regarding project leadership is this: don’t take the trust you have accrued for granted. Never forget that you can spend the trust built up over decades in the span of a few months, and the fastest way to spend it is to stop serving the best interests of your users and developers.
Let this be a sobering reminder for all of us. We shouldn’t point fingers at XFree86 or Sodipodi or Linux-with-bitkeeper, as if they are the only offenders. I have seen it in the leadership of all projects at times, and certainly in myself.