Hi.
More alarming news (IMHO) - /bɑs ˈtjɛ̃ no ˈse ʁɑ/ (hadess) | News: New responsibilities.
Could anyone from Fedora Project team comment on this ?
Maybe @mattdm ?
Regards
ArtūrasB.
1 Like
I think this is not really alarming. The fedora team regularly informed about packages who need maintainers. (see help wanted) If nobody else than paid sponsors work on them, they do have the same rights as everyone else who works for Open-Source Projects, if they think/decide to stop support it, there are other persons/ways needed to solve the issue. Sometimes a software just reached the end of live.
Reminder what Opensource Software is:
We can read the code, we can change it, and even redistribute as long as the appropriate license is respected.
conclusion:
If we can not read and change the code we still have the possibility to sponsor a person who can do so.
In my opinion the post you mentioned is just an additional announcement that the RH developer has other responsibilities and will not be able to continue with the support of the mentioned packages.
2 Likes
I agree, that was a bit exaggerated from my side. It seamed like the project loosing last resource in narrow but important area.
And yes, I understand the nature of OSS and the fact that different person might take over/be hired. Maybe I saw it “dangerous” from the point, that for some time packaging, testing, etc will not happen there.
Anyway, thanks for giving a valid perspective to my question 
2 Likes
This is awful news, not just for Fedora, but for all desktop distros. Bastien has been a major contributor to a large number of GNOME and freedesktop.org projects and author of several. As the blog post says, 12 core desktop components are now completely unmaintained, and 4 of these (the ones that had been maintained under Bastien’s personal namespace) have been archived. He was also a significant kernel contributor and that work has stopped too. Due to the wide scope of his experience and his former responsibilities, this will be a problem for every desktop Linux distro, especially but certainly not limited to GNOME-based distros. Other contributors will need to pick up the pieces, and it will take many new developers to match his expertise.
Anyway, thank you Bastien for your major contributions to desktop Linux!
7 Likes
I think that Bastien was paid by RedHat, and the packages involved are too large for a volunteer to maintain them for free in spare time. IBM seems to be focusing on paid RHEL subscriptions and killing off CentOS, Fedora, and anything else that doesn’t directly add to revenue.
Yes, I got same impression. Sad that big names support FOSS only if it is convenient. Don’t get me wrong, job has to be payed, but loosing important person to the project(s) is not good…
I certainly didn’t want to downplay the hard work of a valuable developer. Rather, I wanted to point out that unfortunately too many maintainers are missing and fedora is regularly on the lookout for help.
I would also like to thank the developer from my side and wish that a reliable substitute will be found for the missing gap as soon as possible. Some devs already took some of the apps over!
Somehow understandably, taking the amount they payed for RH in consideration.
Anyway back to the viewpoint of Fedora with an OpenOffice solution in form of .rpm packages. To get this problem solved I think this is just, independent of the main sponsor, possible to solve. Someone who not depends on corporate investments.
I recently was reading an interview from Alma Linux where they explained how they try to be independent and open while being a nonprofit organization.
Would such a kind of project be welcome and could it be listed/get help in the “Our Neighbors” section?
1 Like