> My personal theory is that what made Russ Cox cave in was his discussions with Sam Boyer. Cox thought Boyer was going down the wrong path, and thought he had a better solution.

That's certainly my understanding of the situation. Matt Farina has a great commented history of dep and vgo [0] if you haven't already seen it. The comments are particularly enlightening.

Still, it's not clear to me what made the Go team get into the package management game at all. As you say, for years they were happy to leave that as a community problem. But something spurred them to declare that Dep was an "official experiment."

> Dep is okay when it works, but inherits pretty much all the warts of Glide, which Boyer also worked on.

Funny, I've had exactly the opposite experience. Glide caused us plenty of trouble at CockroachDB, but Dep has worked flawlessly, if slowly. I've also found Sam to be exceptionally friendly and responsive to feedback [1] [2].

[0]: https://codeengineered.com/blog/2018/golang-godep-to-vgo/#co...

[1]: https://github.com/golang/dep/issues/1927

[2]: https://github.com/golang/dep/issues/460

Personally, I actually never thought Dep was blessed by the Go team to the point that it "was going to be official". So I wouldn't be so fast to say "pretty much everyone". Notably, some loud people "thought" so; I've noticed that many quiet people quietly did not (as can be seen e.g. by the numerous voiced agreements and endorsements of the vgo prototype on the mailing list). Again, I personally expected exactly something similar to what was pulled off in the end to happen. Especially given that whenever somebody started claiming Dep "is going to be official", rsc/rob (don't remember) seemed fast to correct that it's not so, and that it's only an official experiment. Even Sam, after AFAIR being corrected so, was seemingly careful to say only about an official experiment in public emails, readme, etc.

I have numerous thoughts about developments like this one. Mostly, that I've seen a similar situation happen in numerous communities already, Go totally not being the first nor the last one, that the steering commitee have the last say, and may have different taste. I learnt to accept that their choice usually does have merit and usually actually ends for the better. I learnt that it requires a lot of humbleness and sometimes gritting one's teeth, learning to let go of hurt feelings, and accepting that someone else may have reasons you still need to grow to understand. Personally, my own view is that for Sam, this was probably the first time something like this happened, and he wasn't prepared for the hit. And I agree those never stop tasting bitter, given the work one has put in a project of this kind. A good will, hard contribution, being de facto rejected in the end. A child being "lost". But that's not the whole truth, because the child is in this case reborn, though in somewhat different shape. The experiment has served its purpose and brought a lot of value, a significant contribution. On the other hand, I do sometimes wonder, can such situations and misunderstandings be avoided somehow? Or is the world just not perfect enough? And by the way, I also think that Russ was actually taken by surprise by the extent of the reaction. I suppose that's why it took him so long to react, which let the situation and complains get somewhat louder than necessary.

But that's too just my personal opinion. One of many in this somewhat unfortunate situation. I just wanted to also let my steam off in the end, starting to grow more and more tired of the recurring claims that "everybody is surprised". On the contrary, I'm personally one of the people looking forward to vgo, and strongly unconvinced by what dep has become.