Please understand: Complexity <> minimalism. We have no interest in more complexity as we want to reduce that. The financials are common point every project has, which sound a bit more uncommon. So people are either not interested or reject it from the very beginning. So we are "okay" with having a niche for really interested people. The point here is another: People being interested is one thing, another one people understanding also that free, libre software is living from getting hands on and support. Getting a team together builds also upon getting people to get in touch, communicate, test out, document (and stay on documentation) and make feedback.
We had therefore different not so positive experiences in the past as some people promised very much, but later did not hold on for their promises given. May it be:
- Giving a helping hand, perhaps with creating handbooks or whatever else in the project around
- Just testing a bit more
- Support with development (while pretending to have experiences)
- Donate surely money when they said months ago (never reporting back afterwards)
- Ask around who is willing to support further in different fields
- Document in the wiki and stay onwards with the corresponding article (including testing)
.. or even just this: Pretend to work with and for Hyperbola, when they have not even Hyperbola installed or want not to bother with doing so. Yes, all of this was and is experience. And exactly therefore we are a bit tired in those directions. Sure, everyone has a different perspective and may take it more easy or not. In the end: When you give much time, personal engagement and called "heart bleed" into such a project, you have therefore a very strong perspective on having it safe. And the bigger any community, the lesser safe a project gets from experience spoken: There are more people wanting feature X and addition Y, which consults into more problems possible. And we had also people thinking to get into Hyperbola and make it their own playfield and toy, just for their current fun - with really not friendly discussions followed after. So we tried best to keep Hyperbola as project safe, working and going on. But it is also an illusion to compare Hyperbola with other projects with just a complete different goal: Hyperbola is and will be a little but stable and long-term meant operating-system as BSD-descendant, most near to UNIX as possible. It gets towards clients and servers, giving users technical emancipation and freedom for their data with demanding surely their own learning. What Hyperbola is NOT: A BSD-base with more and more packages added, a resulting more complex system with another empty promise of being "self-aware". Nope, that's not the point!
And we had many talks with people stating that Hyperbola "needs to be more bigger", "needs to be all around", "needs to support all common architectures for CPUs" and so much more. All of this is only one thing: A dreamcastle-building as in the end Hyperbola won't be different to any other system out there and forgetting about its roots and ideas. So yes: A niche, but with the issue that people need to understand that phrases like "sharing is caring" are more than phrases and a helping hand for building is also valuable, same as giving some money every month, not the big amount just to support. The other way is to be seen elsewhere: Projects giving big news like yearly congress and more, while looking close enough those "events" are just more sponsored and the projects are driven into full dependency of other groups (nothing in special, can be a wide variety). And some point? Those projects get the call to "implement" something or the donation and sponsorship is gone, while the community thinks nevertheless all is "independent done". That's the dreamcastle, that's the illusion. And "getting bigger" is not the answer for this.
Human being in favor with clear principles and so also for freedom in soft- and hardware!
Certainly anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices: For a life of every being full with peace and kindness, including diversity and freedom. Capitalism is destroying our minds, the planet itself and the universe in the end!