New responsibilities

As part of the same process outlined in Matthias Clasen's "LibreOffice packages" email, my management chain has made the decision to stop all upstream and downstream work on desktop Bluetooth, multimedia applications (namely totem, rhythmbox and sound-juicer) and libfprint/fprintd. The rest of my upstream and downstream work will be reassigned depending on Red Hat's own priorities (see below), as I am transferred to another team that deals with one of a list of Red Hat’s priority projects.

I'm very disappointed, because those particular projects were already starved for resources: I spent less than 10% of my work time on them in the past year, with other projects and responsibilities taking most of my time.

This means that, in the medium-term at least, all those GNOME projects will go without a maintainer, reviewer, or triager:

- gnome-bluetooth (including Settings panel and gnome-shell integration)

- totem, totem-pl-parser, gom

- libgnome-volume-control

- libgudev

- geocode-glib

- gvfs AFC backend

Those freedesktop projects will be archived until further notice:

- power-profiles-daemon

- switcheroo-control

- iio-sensor-proxy

- low-memory-monitor

I will not be available for reviewing libfprint/fprintd, upower, grilo/grilo-plugins, gnome-desktop thumbnailer sandboxing patches, or any work related to XDG specifications.

Kernel work, reviews and maintenance, including recent work on SteelSeries headset and Logitech devices kernel drivers, USB revoke for Flatpak Portal support, or core USB is suspended until further notice.

All my Fedora packages were orphaned about a month and a half ago, it's likely that there are still some that are orphaned, if there are takers. RHEL packages were unassigned about 3 weeks ago, they've been reassigned since then, so I cannot point to the new maintainer(s).

If you are a partner, or a customer, I would recommend that you get in touch with your Red Hat contacts to figure out what the plan is going forward for the projects you might be involved with.

If you are a colleague that will take on all or part of the 90% of the work that's not being stopped, or a community member that was relying on my work to further advance your own projects, get in touch, I'll do my best to accommodate your queries, time permitting.

I'll try to make sure to update this post, or create a new one if and when any of the above changes.

Jobs change

Seeing as everyone is making job-related posts, I thought I'd join in the fun.

After 10 years of service, I've left Red Hat UK on the 31st of October to join Red Hat France on the 1st of November.

I now live in the birthplace of cinema and of French gastronomy, so poke me if you want to talk GNOME or Linux over beers. I've already found the English pub.

Finally recognised!

People still don't understand that I never show up in Red Hat's new UK offices, which is why that little piece of plastic was left for a long while on a desk that I don't occupy: I got my nice little 5-year award today! And I won't have to wait for 5 years for the 10-year on as it will actually be 6 years in September. Wicked!

5 years ago

I found this e-mail in my Inbox today.


Dear Bastien Nocera,

Commitment is a core value at Red Hat because our success depends on dedicated individuals. We would like to thank you for your expression of commitment in achieving 5 years of loyal service. Congratulations on reaching this milestone in your Red Hat career.

Thank you

When I was 16-17, I wanted to work with Linux, and Red Hat was the Linux company, and it still is. And I'm glad I spent 4 years working for the support organisation, I learnt a lot, even though I'm still nodding my way through when Bryn or Jose explain some intricate device-mapper or PAM stuff they've been working on. I don't think I'm done learning.

What did I miss?

Pfff. I go away for a couple of days to watch a football game, and both RHEL 5 and GNOME 2.18 get released in my absence. In a somewhat related way, I didn't know Zara had a men section. Hoooo, manic monkeys!