WineConf Likely Over But There May Be A Proton / Gaming Developer Conference

WineConf as what had been the regularly hosted Wine developer conference for this open-source project devoted to running Windows games/applications on Linux and other platforms is likely over. Due to dwindling attendance and no one stepping up to organize the next WineConf, the developer conference is on hiatus but in place there may end up being something like a Proton conference in the future.

Wine project leader Alexandre Julliard noted that there have been no plans drafted for WineConf 2023 in part because of Jeremy White retiring and CodeWeavers now an employee ownership trust. No one stepped up to organize a WineConf this year that in the past had been organized in part by White.

Attendance meanwhile at WineConf 2022 was lower and when organizing a Wine meeting at FOSDEM this year in Brussels, there was minimal attendance. Or as Julliard put it, "no one showed up."

WineConf has been a regularly hosted Wine developer conference since 2003.

Thus the viability of future WineConfs is in question. Alexandre Juliard does raise the prospect though that perhaps there would be more interest in a conference around Valve's Proton downstream of Wine that powers Steam Play or some other more-focused Wine developer conference like around gaming. But he also questions whether developers still even want to travel to conferences anymore in this post-pandemic world.

Alexandre Julliard began soliciting feedback yesterday on the mailing list while so far no one has chimed in on the interest around future Wine conferences.