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Comment by barkingcat | Hacker News Reader

The most important thing about open source projects is the people, and I'm sad to know of Alan Jeffrey's passing.

RIP.

This is interesting. I've talked about this with several people in the past. For some, the people are more important (like with a singer), and for some the thing is more important (the song). I'm struggling with this for several decades now, because I never was a fan (the closest fan thing I did in 45 years, was reading a GnR biography, otherwise I was never interested in the life of a singer/band, Bowie was in Berlin, ah interesting, coming back to his songs...). Same for open source projects. Linus or Linux? Antirez or Redis?

(Not diminish the work of any open source contributor or creator, or the person)

Same for me, though I think it may also depend on where you grew up, for example in the USA celebrity culture is much more of a thing than in Germany

You are missing the point.

A project lives and dies by the people actually doing the work, especially an open source one. That’s what is meant by the most important part is the people. That’s true independently of the quality of what is actually achieved (that being said great team tends to produce great products).

So Python is dead because van Rossum stepped down?

Last time I checked van Rossum wasn’t the sole contributor of Python, so, no, obviously. Your point being?

Sorry, your thoughts are too random to me.

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