- Edited
crom5 02.11.2018
Ikey Doherty, the founder and lead dev of Solus, has left the project...
Alright, so you point out the terminal event and not the events leading up to this. Ikey left Intel and became a full-time developer for Solus because he was already spending 40+ hours a week on Solus in addition to the 40+ hours a week at Intel. That was a train headed for Burn-out Central. Once Ikey went full-time with Solus, he began spending his new-found free time on personal development. Something that he had basically put on pause for years. Not long-after, Ikey started expressing annoyance over people not respecting his clearly defined working hours and demanding support from him all the time. Then, in August of last year, Ikey made the team aware that he was moving to England where he would be starting a family.
After several weeks of little to no communication, Josh and I were forced to take full control of the project in order to keep moving forward. During this time we made significant strides in future-proofing the project and eliminating bus factors.
Ikey announced that he would be stepping down from leading Solus and pursuing different things. He clearly indicated that this was a personal decision and he thought that "Solus will stand head and shoulders above the crowd forever more."
crom5 07.09.2019
Justin: due to personal issues between myself and the team, I will be moving on from Solus...
Again, terminal event without context. Justin had already been on leave from Solus during the Summer of last year. He didn't start contributing more heavily again until the Spring of this year. I appreciate his contributions, but him leaving isn't a death-knell for Solus. We also would welcome him back if he so desired.
crom5 17.09.2019
sunnyflunk: Stepping down from Core Team
Again, terminal event with no context. Peter has been on unofficial leave from the project while he focuses on work, for most of the last year. @Girtablulu was asked to take on Peter's maintainership of Qt and KDE/Plasma and has been doing excellent work keeping everything up to date, and making the Plasma Edition his own. Peter decided to officially step down from the Core Team because he is focusing on his financial future and does not have the time to serve in that role. He has not left the project and is free to retake his role on the Core Team whenever he pleases.
crom5 17.09.2019
c432: After Ikey's departure Solus is in the maintenance mode. Roadmap is just a list of good wishes I'm afraid.
I've already addressed this several times. If my responses are insufficient in your eyes, I'm waiting for questions.
crom5 2018
crom5: Please don't get me wrong, the following thoughts are expressed with best wishes and intentions. It is my understanding that Solus is an "independent" distribution. The bad news is that in this "strange" times it is forbidden to survive as such. Recent Ikey important life decisions were just so predictable. Similarly, it is very easy to guess what will happen with Solus within a relatively short period of time if the developers doesn't start to earn something from their hard work and efforts...
- Solus is an independent distribution. The sole requirement for this is that we are not built on top of any other Linux distribution.
- Your view of "strange times" appears to us as just another decade of Linux. Distros come and go, names change, people move on, new people rise. That's the way it always has been.
- Ikey's decision to leave was understandable, but not predictable. The transition would have been much less painful if that were the case. We would have been able to plan much much better.
- It really isn't that easy to guess what will happen with Solus in a short time. That has never been the case and I will happily continue to defy all of your expectations.
- Solus is a reward in itself and does not solely rely on praise or donations to continue existing. I think I can safely say that for most, if not all, of the Solus Team that we continue to work on Solus because it's the distro that we want to use. Giving up on it would mean going back to distros we were not happy with in the first place. While I am overjoyed by how many people use Solus every day, that has never been a requirement for my continued involvement in Solus.
crom5 08.09.2019
Manjaro is taking things professionally. While the Manjaro community will be responsible for the development of the project and other related activities, a company has been formed to work as its legal entity and handle the commercial agreements and professional services.
And we have already made it perfectly clear that when time allows or the need demands it that @JoshStrobl and I will be pursuing a relationship between Solus and a non-profit organization so that we can guarantee a legal and financial future for Solus. Right now that isn't our highest priority, even if you think it should be. And Manjaro is taking the very different approach of becoming a company in order to use a different funding model for their distribution. They also have the key difference of having multiple full-time developers who would benefit in many ways from corporate status.