Re: [Flightgear-devel] Leaving

[Richard H. <rj...@za...>]

On 09/02/2026 00:02, Nia via Flightgear-devel wrote:
 > sadly I must say that I'm leaving this community behind, after 
another attack on me...

Sad news.

Nia, I want you to know that your nine years of contributions to 
FlightGear have mattered and moved the project forwards. Your work has 
spanned the project; aircraft development, debugging, scenery build, 
scenery hosting, contributing ideas, and most recently showcasing 
FlightGear with a home cockpit build. The thousands of messages here and 
on the forums are the work of someone seriously committed to both the 
community and the project's development. I hope your contributions bring 
you pride, if not now then later. Please look after yourself. Your 
wellbeing matters more than any of this. Every one of us matters or 
nobody does.

This community has been home to a lot of people who have gone through 
difficult times. Some of us have stepped away and come back. Some have 
struggled with health, with isolation, with finding our place. 
FlightGear has been the thing that kept many of us going - a shared 
passion that gave us purpose and connection. That's a remarkable thing, 
and it's worth protecting.

We protect our community by looking after each other, not just the 
codebase. It has been said that we should keep things focused on the 
development, and I understand this feeling, but we should be able to do 
this as well as looking out for each other. Treating a fellow 
contributor with respect is a fundamental principle of a community, not 
a distraction from what we're trying to do. When someone shares their 
pronouns or asks to be addressed in a certain way, that's not politics - 
it's just someone informing us how to work alongside them, in much the 
same way as using someone's preferred name or callsign without a second 
thought.

When someone tells us they feel unsafe, that deserves to be taken 
seriously - even if we wouldn't feel the same way in their position. Our 
own experiences of hardship can be a source of empathy, but they can 
also lead us to assume that what worked for us should work for everyone. 
Sometimes the most supportive thing we can do is simply listen, rather 
than prescribe.

This project has been built over decades by volunteers around the world 
who chose to give their time and talent freely. Every contributor we 
lose, for any reason, diminishes what we can achieve together.

It is always much more work to pull a community together than to let it 
fall apart, taking patience, tolerance, humility, and embracing our 
differences to understand each other.