From years of working from home in a tiny house I mostly tune out Oblomovka’s work meetings, but today a particular cadence caught my ear. He was asking someone a list of pointed questions about a software project and the staccato back and forth – I could only hear his end of it mind you – sounded oddly mystical. Who maintains it? When was the last commit? What are the dependencies? I realized that it reminded me of The Musgrave Ritual.
‘Whose was it?’
‘His who is gone.’
‘Who shall have it?’
‘He who will come.’
I then stopped listening.
“Did you have a list of questions you were going down? Or were you just riffing?” I asked after he was done with the meeting.
“Making it up.”
I then had to show him the Musgrave Ritual.
It would be funny to have a software engineer / open source project Ritual, maybe a bit like freemasonry.
Who shall maintain it?
They who will come.
At least – that is what we usually hope for.
Let us toast every Brother,
From the East to the West,
Who updates his packages,
And adds lots of tests.