Hey Arborverse, Spriggans, Arboreals, and Treemoji,

I have bitter news today. I have decided to halt my development
efforts on the Arbor Chat Project for the time being.

I started working on Arbor in February, 2018. Since then, it has grown
from a pathetically insecure toy program to a functional (albeit
quirky) chat used by our community daily. When I look back over the
history of Arbor's development, I'm proud to see all that we
accomplished.

However, during the three and a half years that Arbor has been under
development, I believe I have contributed over one and a half
person-years of my time and energy to it while simultaneously being
employed full-time. That is more time and energy that I could actually
give while remaining healthy.

The cost of pouring that time into Arbor has been neglecting both
relationships that are important to me and my own mental health, and I
cannot continue to do so.

As many of you know, I recently left salaried employment to pursue
freelance contracting work. While the structure of this job does allow
me to spend some of my working hours on Arbor, I'm finding it very
difficult to balance that on top of making time for my family and
trying to recover from some pandemic-related mental health problems.
Rather than continue to stress about trying to ensure that I have
something interesting to show the community every two weeks, I've
decided to formally put my code contributions to Arbor on hold.

I will still run Arbor's infrastructure for the time being, and I'm
happy to consult with anyone who is interested in performing feature
work, but I will not be making regular code changes beyond bug fixes.
I will still hang out in arbor-dev though, and would love to keep
chatting with you all there.

I will no longer host biweekly community syncs, but I'd welcome
someone else doing so if others choose to continue working on Arbor.
NOTE: this means that there is NOT a sync meeting on August 19th.

I hope that this is a temporary measure. We have a lot of ideas for
Arbor's development, and I really do think that some of them are
brilliant. I hope that someone tries them, and I'd like to be part of
that in the future. Honestly though, I can't say if or when I'll be
ready to return to doing feature work on Arbor.

If you're interested in leading the charge on some aspect of Arbor's
development, please reach out. If nobody picks it up, that's fine too.
The important thing is that we built both a wonderful community of
people and a unique chat application. Those are accomplishments to be
proud of.

Thanks to each and every Arbor contributor. It has been a privilege
working with you all. If you have questions, please reach out via any
medium including replying here on the mailing list.

Thank you,
Chris Waldon

Chris,

I've been using Arbor since it was first created, and I've made some
contributions where I could. The platform, protocol, and clients have been your
brain-child for years, and while it's still astonishing to see how far they've
come, I'm sorry to hear it's been a burden on your mental health and life. I'm
sorry it's come to this point, however I'm happy that stepping back will grant
you some much-due peace. I think I speak for the community when I say thank you
for all your time, effort, commitment, and leadership over the past several
years. While many have contributed to Arbor to various degrees, we ultimately
have you to thank for it. That thanks is well-earned. I hope the community
continues to support Arbor, and I am looking forward to seeing where it
continues to grow. Your leadership and contributions will be missed, however
your health and well being are ultimately more important. Thank you for all
you've done.

On a more personal note, I can attribute much of my growth as a developer to
working on Arbor and your mentorship, and you're a good friend. I cannot
express my gratitude for all the time we've worked together throughout the
years. Thank you.

Thank you again, truly.

Andrew Thorp