The Linux desktop has a maintenance problem due to the lack of volunteer contributors. One reason for this is that upstream projects are at the mercy of downstream distributions, who have the final say.

As an upstream contributor, you have no choice but to meticulously plead for any reasonable request to be granted by downstreams, treating them as if they were some kind of deity. Not doing so with the utmost respect can get you on their naughty list, which they can then use against you just because they can, and because the license allows it — they will even play the 'you chose the wrong license' card when they have nothing else to say.

The idea that the distribution model expects users to report issues to downstream is no longer valid. In reality, many distributions advertise themselves as user-friendly. Users of these distributions are unaware of the distribution model, so they report issues to upstream rather than downstream. Often, these bug reports and feature requests have already been solved in previous releases, so the upstream has to regularly triage and close duplicate and outdated bug reports. This creates an additional burden for them because they end up spending their limited volunteer time managing these issues when it should be the responsibility of the downstream.

Whenever the upstream project reaches out to the downstream distribution and asks for a change, the response is usually with the downstream pretending to look for a solution by first asking for a list of bugs to be found and compiled, essentially shifting the responsibility back to upstream to start a virtual machine just to test the package and find bugs. If upstream objects to this absurd request, downstream proposes unrelated or unrealistic 'solutions', such as adapting the issue tracker or switching to a proprietary license, just to avoid doing any actual work. Eventually, when the tone of the upstream project changes, the downstream makes remarks on that tone and starts acting like they are the reasonable one; they end the discussion and continue misleading users into reporting to the upstream project, but this time intentionally and out of spite, just to continue avoiding taking responsibility and accountability.

#MaintainerLife #FOSS #OpenSource #FreeSoftware #Development #Linux