SebastianVerified account

I don't want anyone using it because it has X person associated with it. I want it to be used because it's actually useful rather than some flashy new thing that people feel obligated to jump on.

Thinking about it more, there's probably not a lot I can do to prevent it. And doing an "impromptu" release could have the opposite effect. If I didn't want any expectations then I shouldn't have spoken publicly about it at all. That's the main reason I didn't prior.

I don't want early access. I'm afraid of building an ivory tower of privileged people. For Yarn we invited people at the beginning. It allowed them to influence the development process but we overrotated on their feedback.

It's possible to select people who are the most relevant, and I felt like we did. The feedback was valuable, but they weren't necessarily the ones who would actually be invested post-release.

So I spent time satisfying their constraints which would turn out to not be relevant. Again, this can be mitigated if you have a more cohesive community where everyone is mostly on the same page.

Another point is around inclusivity. I don't want anyone to feel left out. No matter how wide you cast the net, there's always going to be someone valuable you've left out. Performing value judgements on people is gross and not really something I want to have to do.

Especially since position in the community, which most use as a measure of relevancy, doesn't necessarily yield the most useful feedback.

I've never received private feedback that wouldn't have been more valuable to have publicly. Once your community reaches a certain size that can be extremely noisy though.