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Who?

GitLab: Boris Kraut

Project: F-Droid

Date: 06/16/2017

Why?

The contributor’s posted on the project’s forum with two main reasons as to why they disengaging from the project.

The first of which was that they’re no longer using Android, which was the system the project was built for. They specifically mentioned how they believe that a maintainer should be a user of the project, because they’d (their idealized maintainer) would be more invested in the project.

I don’t use Android myself anymore – don’t you worry, I don’t use any less free systems either – so my own interest and motivation are low. Also, I really think maintainers should indeed be users of the “product”, they should dogfood it and actually care about the whole platform.

The second issue is they don’t believe they’re the right person to be deciding on the project’s direction. According to them:

Given some dissent about the way to handle upcoming challenges (like complex builds, app developers eager to use latest pre-release stuff from Google and how to monitor all the stuff builds (and Google itself) start pulling in at buildtime etc.),

They feel as if they’re not the right person to decide which direction the project is going in, and as a results mentions that the project might be better off in the hands of someone else with a new outlook on things.

I and my personal believes about software might also hinder F-Droid’s further success: Newer generation always have a different view on “values”, on techniques, on problem-solving, so these new problems might need fresh people to solve them.