GUADEC 2019 - Georges Basile Stavracas Neto - About Maintainers and Contributors
Channel: GUADEC
Date: 2019-08-31

We go to great lengths to ensure a consistent and smooth experience to those who use GNOME, but do we do the same for those who make it?

This talk is about the multitude of challenges, joys, glooms, and routine of being a GNOME application maintainer. The idea came after writing about being a free software maintainer [1], and observing the massive repercussion it had. Turns out, we barely talk about how we maintainers feel, the challenges we face but are lost amidst bug trackers, merge requests, and IRC conversations.

The talk will be done in 3 parts:

    Very brief overview about my trajectory from a user to a contributor to a maintainer;
    The different situations that happen after becoming a maintainer
    Potential strategies for dealing with the maintainership struggles 

The tone of the talk, however, is less about giving answers, and more about exposing situations, sharing stories and struggles, and opening a safe space to talk about it. Non-maintainers will have the chance to look and appreciate what does it take to be a maintainer.