Hello all,

You may have noticed that there have not been weekly status reports or blog articles since late March 2020. A lot of notable things have happened in the Adélie Linux project, and other related projects, since then. However, I feel it is important to start with a more personal introspection.

As Project Lead of Adélie Linux, and co-owner of Adélie Software in the Public Benefit, my attention is regularly pulled in many different directions. In April 2020, my mother — the other co-owner of Adélie Software in the Public Benefit — suffered a health malady. Her health is improving now, but combining my existing workload with caring for her caused me to suffer a diabetic emergency. All of this caused financial strain, both regarding the business (from the inability of us to perform work) and personally (for healthcare costs). These issues are also beginning to calm down. These experiences have led me to a few realisations about our community and how to better lead it.

This starts with the Weekly Status Reports. I started writing the Weekly Status Reports to keep interested parties involved with the project even if they could not participate in our IRC or mailing lists. However, the rigidity of posting them weekly has always been a source of contention for me. There are some weeks where nothing much of note happens, and there are other weeks when it seems more appropriate to have had two or three posts because so much happened. Additionally, the Weekly Status Reports were always authored solely by me. My time for writing them is virtually non-existent, and writing them – especially in such detail – takes time away from actually working on the project. In addition, moving forward I would like all members of our team to be able to write about the changes they are responsible for.

It is with this in mind that I am formally announcing the retirement of Weekly Status Reports.

A new initiative, Adélie.Dev, will be launched in the coming days. The Weekly Status Reports provided information about what had already been done; it is my hope that Adélie.Dev will not only provide this to the community, but also provide information about what is still being worked on. This way, newcomers to our community can see tasks being actively developed and join in if they are able. It can also provide cohesion and prevent duplicated effort.

This blog will shift to being more article-driven, providing news and updates from the community in a more traditional blog format. It will also continue to serve as the official Web location for release announcements.

I look forward to watching this community continue to grow into something we can all be proud to be a part of.

In solidarity,
–arw