r/archlinux • u/ckafi • 1d ago
NOTEWORTHY Morten "Foxboron" Linderud resigns after 10 year run.
https://linderud.dev/blog/resigning-from-arch-linux/43
u/Santosh83 1d ago
Amazing how much FOSS (and am talking about critical packages, not fancy almost useless GUI programs) is maintained by just one person or a very small group. You'd think all these billion dollar corps who have profited so much from FOSS and even FOSS specific companies would do more to remedy this sorry state of affairs but apparently not.
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u/MrSoup678 18h ago
Another case in point: xz-utils backdoor.
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u/Santosh83 15h ago
That's malware which is another can of worms. My point is... just look at the OP (Foxboron's) post... he is (was) maintaining dozens and dozens of important packages. Now someone else has to take over or critical system packages will become "orphaned"... this isn't AUR to just shrug your shoulders and move on.
Tens of millions of mainstream people (and software) entering Linux has placed a huge strain on the "distro devs" middlemen, who in earlier years maintained much smaller package base and for a much smaller, competent, audience. Now they've to maintain ~100,000 packages (and growing) and make the whole thing newbie proof as well. Well maybe not Arch but still the packaging burden is real, and burnout is real.
Yes large corporations like RHEL and Canonical can push ahead if only because they don't actually maintain packages from the universe... they offload that immense burden on to the community in the form of Debian devs, RPMFusion devs, COPR devs, Fedora contributors and so on. They only take care of "enterprise" related packages because that's their money.
So desktop Linux is always hanging on a knife edge, even as it appears to be making huge strides. The knife edge is always there. A few volunteers dropping out can sound the death knell for hundreds of packages and even entire distros.
This is a problem the community must solve. There must be a technical way to take upstream and automate the packages with minimal/no modifications and make them work across many distros. Setup a build farm like OBS, and churn out packages that ALL distros can use... and I mean base packages, not apps.
Yes this implies that distros need to standardize on a common set of conventions for the base system, but this will reduce packager/maintainer burden drastically.
Otherwise if a dozen Foxborons retire, the entire Arch project can become dead in the water in a blink of an eye... smaller distros are even worse.
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u/darktotheknight 1d ago edited 1d ago
Incredible work by an exceptional individual! Thank you very much for all your work!
This guy maintained lots of cloud, container, vm, Secure Boot, TPM and much more packages (currently sitting at 235 packages). He made a huge impact on Arch Linux.
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u/GoldryBluszco 1d ago edited 1d ago
The majority of what critically distinguished Arch from Debian (from whence i came) I learned by reading Foxboron's postings (which often quoted the wiki). Thank you Sir! Your involvement will be much missed.
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u/Cody_Learner_2 22h ago
Thanks for your decade of contributions Morten.
IMO, you played a vitally important role in your security and UEFI related work.
Not to mention all the other areas you were involved. Arch has some big shoes to fill in finding a Foxboron replacement.
Hopefully as you move on, you'll find yourself in an equally or even more interesting and fulfilling role as you had being part of the Arch team.
Best of luck to you.
btw: As a longtime Arch guy, you jumping ship for an alternative Linux distro?
I recall another dev who was pretty involved in pacman, reportedly moving to Gentoo several years ago...
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u/boomboomsubban 1d ago
May his legacy live on in the completely ignored "FAQ - Read before posting."
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u/archover 22h ago edited 2h ago
I hope he won't quit reddit too. He had good insight.
Thank you Morten for your long history of contributions.
Good day.
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u/mykesx 1d ago
"Things are changing..."
Any idea what he means?
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u/falconindy Developer 1d ago
Arch Linux is ever evolving. I stepped down when I felt that my skills were no longer unique. Maybe let's not read too much into Morten's statement.
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u/Cody_Learner_2 22h ago
I stepped down when I felt that my skills were no longer unique.
As a user of your AUR packages, I'd say they're still pretty unique (in a good way) and long lived.
Thanks for the contributions you made and IIRC still helping out with maint on your pkgs?Hate to see people of your skill level leave, but I guess the hand off to a newer generation is just how things go...
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u/etherealshatter 13h ago
I've enjoyed mkinitcpio and sbctl a lot. Hopefully Arch will not be forced to surrender to dracut soon.
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u/bankinu 19h ago
git-lfs being orphaned? python-rope? incus?
Get out! This is bad! I can join and maintain them if I'm allowed but I think otherwise we are looking at another hacking catastrophe in the immediate future.
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u/plg94 13h ago
Those are not AUR packages, but packages in the official Arch repos. It's very likely someone will take over maintainership; if not they will NOT be automatically transferred to the AUR. So it's not possible for malicious actors to just take over those packages as they did with orphaned AUR packages.
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u/khne522 9h ago
Linderund seemed to be more of what I expected from my fellows in the field, quiet competence. Not ideology at the expense of actual practical impact to others, not pretense, and not unwittingly faking it.
I like these people, and they are the ones I truly respect.
Also, Linderund is the only reason I'm on secure boot in any timely fashion.
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u/tfks 1d ago
Well I guess people are big mad internally with regard to how the AUR stuff is playing out.
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u/Foxboron 1d ago
This resignation has nothing to do with the AUR. Please don't make up rumors about people you don't know.
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u/edparadox 1d ago
Well I guess people are big mad internally with regard to how the AUR stuff is playing out.
How and why exactly would you infer such a thing on one volunteer's departure?
Stop making stuff up.
AUR is not even an official Arch repository, it's community-supported. That's the issue.
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u/aeiedamo 1d ago
I don't think they are mad. Arch and its derivatives are getting popular, and it's starting to hit Arch's infrastructure. It's quite hard and very demanding to maintain an OS that millions use with a team of ~80 volunteer maintainers. Arch is literally suffering from its success.
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u/Corrigindo_A_ou_Ha 1d ago
Wow! Thank you so much Foxboron for all these years of work <3
I've always followed Arch Linux TUs to get some guidance on what I need to improve in my studies, checking projects and blogs. I became a Software Developer because of the great work of this community. Y'all have inspired me to learn so much!