Spacy: Am I still the maintainer of this library?

[syllog1sm]

I started writing spaCy in July 2014, and announced the alpha release in January 2015. In September 2015 I teamed up with @henningpeters , to build an NLP company together. We finally formalised things in February 2016, but by May 2016 we'd decided to break up. Now everything's a mess.

The spacy.io domain, rights to the name spaCy, official copyright etc, is all owned by spaCy GmbH. I'm a 50% owner of the parent, spaCy Inc, but I currently have no direct authority within the subsidiary. I've been locked out of my @spacy.io email address since early June. If you've tried to reach me on that address and I haven't replied — that's why.

Henning: I've been asking you for weeks whether I'm still the maintainer of this library, and the associated dependencies. Since you won't answer in private, I have to ask in public, because if this library is unmaintained, people ought to know. I've already waited far too long to do this. I've been avoiding replying to issues, because I thought my inability to push out changes and update the docs would only be temporary. But it's been over six weeks, and there's still no resolution.

If spaCy GmbH doesn't want me to maintain this library, then I suppose I'll have to fork it. This seems fairly senseless, but if that's what you require — okay. I just need an answer, one way or another. I wish you'd clarified this in private.

[viksit]

Erk.

@syllog1sm thanks for posting this here for the community's benefit. spaCy is an amazing piece of work, and if we can do anything to help - please do let us know.

[spencermountain]

very sad to hear. You guys have done inspiring work. Be cautious with any non-compete legal stuff before beginning a hard-fork.
I and others, I'm sure, would follow if you decide to rebrand/fork. Many remain excited about this project.

[Kharms]

For folks that stumble upon this issue:

Unfortunately, we (Henning Peters and Matthew Honnibal) are parting ways. Breaking up is never easy, and it's taken us a while to get our stuff together. Hopefully, you didn't notice anything was up — if you did, we hope you haven't been inconvenienced.

Here's how this is going to work: Matt will continue to develop and maintain spaCy and all related projects under his name. Nothing will change for you. Henning will take over our legal structure and start a new business under a new name.

Sincerely,
Henning Peters and Matthew Honnibal

[honnibal]

Thanks @kharms — was just in the process of publishing the announcement.

https://www.spacy.io/blog/announcement

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