Hey folks!

Just wanted to sit down and let everyone know where things stand and to give you all a sense of where things will be going from here. As many of you are already aware, Josh has left the team and a few other folks have also taken their leave. This does not mean that Solus will be shutting down, but it does mean that there are going to be some changes to the organizational structure and that I personally will be taking a more active role in the day-to-day operations than I have been this past year or so.

With that in mind, the following items are on my docket for the next few weeks and may be of interest to you:

  1. Deferring sync. In light of the holiday weekend and needing time to sort everything out, we will be deferring sync until next Friday (1/14). This will give everyone a chance to focus on the transition, without having to worry about day-to-day package maintenance.
  2. Scheduling one-on-one meetings with the Global Maintainers. I will be sitting down with each of them to clear the air, solicit feedback on project processes and structure, and discuss how their roles might change in the coming weeks.
  3. Completing the transition of access rights and ownership from Josh to myself. I'll be auditing everything that Josh has graciously provided to me already for anything that is missing and then transferring ownership to accounts which are tied to my Solus email account. I will also be performing a brief audit of our web-facing infrastructure in case I have any lingering questions for him.
  4. Formally transferring copyright and trademark claims from Solus to Josh and the BuddiesOfBudgies organization. This will free both parties of any future legal concerns and allow Budgie to carry on, unimpeded, with it's continued mission to provide an excellent distro-agnostic Desktop Environment. Solus would like to continue its relationship with the Budgie project as one of its downstreams and we look forward to working with them to provide a stellar Budgie experience for our Budgie Edition.
  5. Setting up a succession plan. I'm not planning on leaving the project any time soon, but in the event that something happens to me or I eventually decide to retire, Solus needs to be able to continue. I will be putting together documentation for regaining access to our infrastructure and plans for disaster recovery if things can't be recovered easily. I will also be assigning backup access to another member of the Team so that they will be able to pass this information on to my successor or at least use it as interim until a new one is found.
  6. Designing a new organizational structure for Solus. Recent events have shown that we definitely need to make some changes to how Solus is structured. The project has grown and our existing structure hasn't quite worked out the way we had hoped. I have been in various discussions now where we've started to get an idea of what this might look like and I will be further tailoring this to feedback from the Global Maintainers. One of the biggest differences this time around will be a focus on making it clear to the team and public alike what their duties and responsibilities are and who is the best point of contact for certain parts of Solus.
  7. Re-evaluating our Community Guidelines. It's clear that we have outgrown our existing guidelines as a project and need to make some improvements going forward. I will be working with the Team to improve our existing Community Guidelines which will then be applied to everyone engaged with the project. A separate document will be drafted in addition to these guidelines to specifically address issues that may arise amongst Team members. Part of the new organizational changes will be establishing who is responsible for mediating these situations when conflicts arise between members of the various parts of the project.
  8. Growing the Team. In order to meet the needs of a growing Solus, we will be bringing new people into the fold to help carry out duties as required. Some of these folks will be ones familiar to the Solus Community, but we are also looking for "fresh blood" to help bring new perspectives and ideas to the project.

We may be off to a bit of a rocky start, but I'm cautiously optimistic that 2022 will be a great year for the project. I look forward to working with you all to make Solus even better.

~Beatrice

    DataDrake stickied the discussion .

    [unknown] Team members, maintainers, contributors, and community members. Some of them I hope to be able to add to the Team itself soon.

      DataDrake Will there be a call for volunteers going out or do you have a team in mind already? Either way, it sounds like things are in very capable hands and I'm excited for what the future holds.

          Brucehankins A bit of both. I have some people in mind. I've also been asking for suggestions from the existing Team. After we get some of them set up, I'll be putting out a call for the areas we've identified need the most help.

            Thanks for the update, its cleared things up somewhat. Congratulations on taking up the mantle of lead.
            Its very much deserved and good to know Solus is in capable hands

            I'm hoping to be able to contribute in some way or form at some point. My job pretty much allows me to use whatever language I feel as long as it gets the job done. What is the primary language used for Solus? C++? Will code be transitioned over to rust at some point? Just asking because I'd like to focus learning and using a language that I could potentially put to use on projects I care about. Thanks for all you do for Solus, I definitely appreciate it!

            Thank you, it is a mature and professional reaction, very respectful of the user community. It is a good counterweight to unexpected and feverish departures.

            This can actually be a good thing if done well.
            Joshua&Budgie team can focus on Budgie while Solus can focus on what makes Solus Solus.

            I see this as Budgie is not just Solus anymore and Solus is not just Budgie, both brojects have grown up and validated their own existence in their own rights/fields separately not just together.

            Iā€™m confident both of the teams can make this work, excited to see where this goes in the future!

              PreyK Budgie is not just Solus anymore and Solus is not just Budgie

              Well put. After getting over the shock of Josh's abrupt departure, I'm beginning to see the bright side, too. In fact, much as I loved Budgie, I don't even use it anymore, but I don't think I'll ever stop using Solus while I'm still able to type on a keyboard.

                @DataDrake

                I admire the professionalism in the way you're taking up these big responsibilities. As a Solus user for years I have no doubt whatsoever that this wonderful OS will continue to be the best. Thank you!

                PreyK I'm confident, too. Beatrice's point #4 confirms this and it was absolutely necessary to separate these entities neatly and fairly.

                  I think this is a very important thread and I propose to make it a thread for suggestions

                  My suggestion is that a playlist on how to become a solus maintainer appears on the solus channel on YouTube or any other video hosting site. This will render the 3 sections of the Solus help center and will attract a large (if not a huge number of people)

                  best regards, Georgii, a.k.a DrSheppard

                    Good stuff. Sounds like a plan. Looking forward to continuing to use Solus in 2022. Cheers for all the hard work šŸ™‚.

                    George it would be nice to see more information somewhere on how to get more involved with package maintaining. The forums and other users were a great help to me.

                        George [A]lso, at such a difficult moment, I invite all concerned members of the community to support solus

                        Financial contributions keep the lights on, so to speak, paying for servers and other expenses of the project. The expenses are not trivial -- just under $14,000 USD per year. Last year contributions appear to have covered expenses, and we need to do that again this year, and going forward.