Maintainer confidential: Opportunities and challenges of the ubiquitous but under-resourced Yocto Project
Maintainers are an important topic of discussion. I’ve read a few perspectives, but I’d like to share mine as one of the lesser-known maintainers in the open source world.
Who am I, and what do I do? I have many job titles and, in many ways, wear many hats. I’m the “architect” for the Yocto Project and the maintainer and lead developer for both OpenEmbedded-Core and BitBake. I’m the chair of the Yocto Project Technical Steering Committee (TSC) and a member of the OpenEmbedded TSC. I am also a Linux Foundation Fellow, representing a rare “non-kernel” perspective. The fellowship was partly a response to an industry-wide desire for me to work in a position of independence for the good of the projects and communities I work with rather than any one company.
The different roles I’ve described hint at the complexities that are part of the everyday tasks of maintaining a complex open source project. Still, to many, it could look like a complex labyrinth of relationships, directions, and decisions to balance.