I never thought I would say this, but I no longer feel that I am able
to do justice to the post of Angband Maintainer, and thus, I am stepping
down, and passing the torch to Robert Ruehlmann (ruehlmann.cas@da.xis.de).

Robert seems to share most of my vision of what Angband should be, most
significantly, that Angband should emphasize its place as a clean base
from which variants can easily be developed, instead of attempting to
become the next cutting edge variant.  Also, he has shown himself to be
capable of the task in many ways, including the running of one of the
better Angband web sites, maintaining Zangband, and doing a lot of work
in the realm of collecting Angband patches and writing some of his own.
He has already put together an "Angband 2.9.0" release which he should
be announcing later today (if he has not already done so), which, when
combined with the changes I already made in "Angband 2.8.5 beta", should
be a good indication of the direction he intends to take with the future
of Angband.  More detail will appear at "Thangorodrim - The Angband Page"
(aka "http://thangorodrim.angband.org/") later today.  I will be migrating
the state of my web pages and such over to Robert, leaving a pointer to his
pages.  I will attempt to forward any Angband related email to him as well.

As to why I am stepping down, it basically comes down to the fact that
I just don't have the time any more to do all the things I want to do
with my life (especially now that I am working for an internet startup),
and the fact that I know that Angband will continue to be maintained by
someone who does not intend to destroy it (so I can rest easy at night).

Before anybody asks, I will continue to lurk on the newsgroup, waiting
for people to ask if I am dead before responding to a bunch of unrelated
posts, just to reassure people that the Ben AI is still functional....

And I reserve the right to submit patches, just like everybody else.  :-)

Oh, and before I forget, both Robert and I have placed all of the changes
we have made to Angband under the GPL, on the theory that, if we can get
the original authors of Moria and Angband to agree to the GPL as well,
then Angband itself would then be covered by the GPL, since all future
patch submissions will be assumed to be submitted under the GPL.  Until
such time, of course, the original copyright will still apply:

/*
 * Copyright (c) 1997 Ben Harrison, James E. Wilson, Robert A. Koeneke
 *
 * This software may be copied and distributed for educational, research,
 * and not for profit purposes provided that this copyright and statement
 * are included in all such copies.  Other copyrights may also apply.
 */

--- Ben ---