Re: [Gnewsense-dev] Stepping down

[Paul Boddie]

On Tuesday 23. July 2019 23.06.07 Sam Geeraerts wrote:
> After much consideration, I've decided to step down as the maintainer of
> gNewSense. It was the distro I fell in love with and it would hurt me to
> see it disappear. Yet I must be honest with myself and the community and
> face the facts. I feel like I can't give it the attention it needs to
> keep it in a state worthy of a distro recommended by the FSF. I'm sorry
> to disappoint current users and those anticipating a new release.

Thank you for all your work on gNewSense, and please do not feel that you have 
disappointed anyone! Those of us who try and make things to share with others 
can often experience a sense of obligation to continue to deliver those 
things, but nobody should be in a position to demand anything from you or even 
expect anything from you.

> I would like to thank everyone who I've worked with and who contributed
> to gNewSense since it sparked from Paul O'Malley's brain over a decade
> ago. It's been fun and educational.
> 
> If someone wants to take over I will be quite happy to get that person
> going. I then might still help out, but I'm not going to take the lead
> anymore. Please get in touch or forward to anyone who might be interested.
> 
> I will keep the repositories and other infrastructure running for now.

I am still interested in "libre" distributions and feel that Debian is a 
reasonable-enough foundation for them. Although things like PureOS occupy the 
same niche, it is still useful to have the knowledge out there so that these 
projects can be established again and sustained if the circumstances demand 
it.

I know that there was some work on the tooling a while back, and I do wonder 
what might be needed to bring the distribution back up to date. If some of us 
could be led through that process, even if deficiencies are known to exist 
with it, maybe it would allow things to continue.

Paul