An Open Letter To Solus From Its Founder Ikey Doherty

[boxie]

He was completely out of money and still left Intel? Why on earth would he do that? That message sounds like he's homeless or something :-/

Never heard of a stay at home Dad?

Probably thought he could pull it off - a bit of code here and there.... turns out being a parent is not conducive to long streaks of concentration

[Vistaus]

He was completely out of money and still left Intel? Why on earth would he do that? That message sounds like he's homeless or something :-/

He had to move back to England from Ireland. You think that's cheap? Me moving from one province to another in my country alone cost me a few thousand euros, so I can only imagine it'd be double that when moving from one country to another.

[Vistaus]

Hi Ikey, good to hear you are alright. Thank you for everything you did to make Solus great, and to pave the way so it will only become better. I wish you all the best. Take care friend. PS. thanks for ending my distro hopping years, Solus for life!

Couldn't agree more! Solus also ended my distro hopping years and Ikey is the main reason Solus has become so amazing, so thank you so much, Ikey

[polarathene]

> Needless to say I am without access to many of my old accounts, which is not something I'm able to rectify.

How did something like that come about?

[blackiwid]

I find that letter confusing, if he wrote that as email to his friends at that project fine, but it's so full of outspoken things, you have to guess because he doesn't give detail. I mean he literally doesn't give a reason why he backed down.

He suggests things I wonder what the hell is going on with like:
"Needless to say I am without access to many of my old accounts"

Why would that be needless, why would he have no access to his accounts, if he just could not deal with live and could not work, why would he loose access to his accounts did his computer or hard disc fail or did he get into fights so that other project members deleted or disabled his accounts?

I thought maybe I read something in the comments about it, but nobody apparently thinks that this text is super weird than I do.

As a final request to the Solus team, from one that considers himself a friend, I ask that they stay strong to their cause, and rise above the toxicity and politics that plague the Linux desktop world, to remain a shining beacon of hope, an example for how open source should be.

Then after what reads to me that there were conflicts (but that is speculation, because he don't really tells what happend), and extremely passive and overly nice words to his team, like he would care to make a clear cut where no one was till that point, like he want now be the better person he maybe didn't was in the past? I am sorry I know it's only speculation but that sounds to me like a letter from somebody that fucked up, and now somebody else gave him a text that he is supposed to sign like this statements from employers from big companies that fucked up.

But then he starts randomly attacking the "Linux Desktop" and it's toxicity, maybe I missed something but I didn't notice any hate for Solus. And maybe he defines "Desktop" other than me, for me that is the Desktop environment so gnome vs kde vs solus DE whatever they use vs xfce ... even there I don't see to much toxicity there was hate against Canonical for backstabbing many projects and so on, and well against gnome, but why would he bring that up here, and it was worse in the past, after Canonical surrendered on the desktop front, that war pretty much cooled down.

Or is he referring to the Linux part of "Linux Desktop" so is he talking about the CoC from the Kernel, at least partially or why he brought that up now? Then who does he find toxic here the people that are happy with it attacking the kernel through introducing as radical feminists or SJWs things that will lead eventually to much friction of the developer community and push away many new people from contributing (imho), or does he talk about the loud people that criticize it or what.

Yes I speculate a lot, but that's the problem he releases a big wall of text but speaks only in riddles. Because he don't address what the problem were, but only hints in 1 2 directions very indirectly that is the only thing you can do besides taking 0 information out of the text and questioning why did he release such words that say absolutely nothing, like written from a lawyer to the public.

[makitso]

Déjà vuIf you were around when Evolve imploded.

[Willdrick]

I have been lurking Phoronix for years, I just registered with a little hope ikey will see this:

What does parenthood and GTK have in common? neither have proper documentation

You'll be a great parent!

Good luck!

[KingVario]

This is one of the main reasons linux as an OS sucks so much, because anything done by individuals in their free time has no responsability or repercussions for what they do.
In a company the nucleus of everything is money, if you do the wrong thing or neglect your product/customers you will go bankrupt eventually, you neglect employees they live/go on strike, when its all voluntary responsability is thrown out the window, and everyone does what they want, since there is no money as motivation or penalizer involved.
Its never going to work long term.
Im looking at DXVK and i feel worried about it, is it a team behind it? is it a single person? do they have enough financial? they might have zlib free license anyone can pickup development if founder dissapears, but will someone takeover? or 20 different versions will popup if original project falls on its face? no one knows.
I find this issue to be the Achilles heel of open source, free software.

[fuzz]

Im looking at DXVK and i feel worried about it, is it a team behind it? is it a single person? do they have enough financial? they might have zlib free license anyone can pickup development if founder dissapears, but will someone takeover? or 20 different versions will popup if original project falls on its face? no one knows.

I get your point, but Valve is definitely behind the development of DXVK.

[nitroflow]

This is one of the main reasons linux as an OS sucks so much, because anything done by individuals in their free time has no responsability or repercussions for what they do.
In a company the nucleus of everything is money, if you do the wrong thing or neglect your product/customers you will go bankrupt eventually, you neglect employees they live/go on strike, when its all voluntary responsability is thrown out the window, and everyone does what they want, since there is no money as motivation or penalizer involved.
Its never going to work long term.
Im looking at DXVK and i feel worried about it, is it a team behind it? is it a single person? do they have enough financial? they might have zlib free license anyone can pickup development if founder dissapears, but will someone takeover? or 20 different versions will popup if original project falls on its face? no one knows.
I find this issue to be the Achilles heel of open source, free software.

But unlike proprietary software, one can take the code when it goes under, or build a for profit company around the open code.

DXVK is backed by Valve for use in it's wine based Proton, did you know that?