About four years ago in 2018, Ikey Doherty (creator of Solus) left and handed over the project to other developers associated with it due to some personal reasons.
Back then, Solus transitioned to new management and brand-new infrastructure, with the core vision intact.
Recently, on January 1, 2022, Joshua Strobl, the main developer of Budgie and the co-lead of Solus Linux distribution, announced that he was leaving the Solus project.
Why Did Joshua Leave Solus OS Project?
Joshua did not steer up any controversies with the announcement. However, with his tweet, he linked to a detailed announcement where he covers more details about why he resigned.
Here’s what he mentions:
To summarize why I am resigning from Solus, I have attempted to raise a wide range of issues which affect the ability to contribute to Solus, both from myself and others in the community. I want to be clear, I haven’t been a perfect leader. Like at all. It has been a learning experience like everything else, and over the last couple years I’ve genuinely tried to be more open to feedback, proposals, change, and so on. Sometimes I have been impatient. Sometimes I didn’t take feedback to heart. I am only human.
And, then he goes on explaining:
I presented feedback based on issued that were raised to me by a formal Global Maintainer for Solus. I won’t delve into details, because frankly I don’t want to air dirty laundry. Everyone is better that, including me. But the fact is that the feedback wasn’t acted on, and that was in September.
So, it looks like Joshua wanted some critical feedback to be worked on, but it wasn’t acknowledged as he would expect it to be.
Of course, there can be communication problems and decision-making issues; we are all humans after all.
However, Joshua goes on to mention that the team did not address any of his feedback/issues raised for months:
In October, additional behavior brought me to a breaking point. I basically resigned from Solus at that point, in our development channel. If it wasn’t for folks reaching out, I would’ve done followed through.
And here we are again, with further issues not being addressed and rather than the parties accepting their part / responsibility, it’s been just deflected and not acknowledged. No issues I raised addressed, nothing I felt needed for Solus’ community improvement addressed either.
Hence, he decided to leave Solus and work on something else.
Joining Ikey on SerpentOS
Interestingly, Joshua is joining Ikey to work on SerpentOS. If you missed the announcement for SerpentOS two years ago, you can read more about it in our older coverage for Serpent Linux.
We do not know what he plans with this development, but this can be something exciting in the near future.
Budgie Fork Under a New Organization and a New Repository
While Joshua will continue working on Budgie Desktop, he plans to fork it to form a new organization inviting Ubuntu Budgie, Endeavour OS, and others to be the partners.
The development for Budgie 10 series will continue, and you should also expect Budgie 11 in the future.
As mentioned in one of his tweets, this change aims to open Budgie Desktop to projects using it and improve engagement from others (not just downstream).
Status of Solus OS
Fortunately, Solus is not going anywhere for the time being but considering Joshua was the co-lead of the project; this would again require new management and changes to how the team operates/decides future changes.
Only time will tell how the development for Solus goes and if it will impact its future releases.
What do you think about the co-lead of Solus leaving the project to focus on Budgie desktop and join SerpentOS? It was a surprising announcement to start the new year, what about you?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments down below.
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