Leaving the Linux distribution community

It is with a heavy heart that I am publicly announcing my immediate retirement from the Linux distribution community. This is not a decision I have arrived at lightly.

This year has been challenging for every living being on planet Earth. For me personally, 2020 has given me a lion’s share of financial challenges. I am financially hurting in ways that I could have never imagined.

Adélie Linux and its community has always been a passion of mine, and that passion is still intact. However, it is not responsible for me to continue to act as Project Lead when I need to focus on things that will make me enough money to survive.

Without the ability to be paid to work on Adélie Linux, there is not enough time in my day to devote to it and give it the attention and care that it so rightfully deserves. It is not fair to the community to have to wait weeks (or longer) for me to review merge requests, fix bugs, respond to issues, and so on.

My heart and soul will always belong to Adélie and the wonderful community we have built together over the past six years.

I will stay around long enough to properly transfer my Lead role to someone else, who can carry Adélie to great things in the future. However, I will not be contributing much in the way of patches or code to upstreams like musl or KDE going forward.

It is my sincere hope that when I am in a better financial situation, I can resume leadership of Adélie Linux, if the community should so desire. I cannot see the future and do not know when, or if, that could happen.

Until then, I wish all of you the very best and look forward to watching Adélie Linux continue to grow, from a distance.

With much respect,

–arw