Mr. Joshua Strobl, one of the key contributors in the Budgie Desktop and the Solus has announced his plan to resign from the Solus project. The decision is because of differences in opinion with some team members.

Joshua Strobl resigns from the Solus

As per the resignation note by Joshua, he will continue to contribute to the budgie desktop by setting up an independent organization consisting of other active contributors to the project. To this purpose, Joshua has created a new Github organization and a Transifex account with the name Buddies of Budgie.

Meanwhile, the Solus project has tweeted the project will continue with some changes in the roles and responsibilities and will share further update in the coming weeks.

In the resignation note, Joshua also writes his plan to join Ikey Doherty - founder of the Solus and Budgie projects - in the SerpentOS project.

As many of you know, I had previously announced plans to stream during the start of this new year to kick off the development of the new web infrastructure and wrap up a couple of development items.

These streams are canceled on part of this announcement: I am resigning from Solus.

I know this announcement will come as a shock to many of you. I have been involved in Solus for over 6 years. It would have been 7 in March. I started out as just someone contributing patches for new software, then helped shape and communicate developments in Solus (and as it was formerly called, evolveOS) as a member of the team. Along the way I got iAs many of you know, I had previously announced plans to stream during the start of this new year to kick off the development of new web infrastructure and wrap up a couple of development items.

These streams are canceled on part of this announcement: I am resigning from Solus.

I know this announcement will come as a shock to many of you. I have been involved in Solus for over 6 years. It would have been 7 in March. I started out as just someone contributing patches for new software, then helped shape and communicate developments in Solus (and as it was formerly called, evolveOS) as a member of the team. Along the way I got involved in more of the development In 2018, I stepped up to help co-lead Solus. I became the main developer of Budgie. And yea, I made pretty controversial stands in relation to other developments in the Linux ecosystem.

To summarize why I am resigning from Solus, I have attempted to raise a wide range of issues that affect the ability to contribute to Solus, both from myself and others in the community. I want to be clear, I haven't been a perfect leader. Like at all. It has been a learning experience like everything else, and over the last couple of years, I've genuinely tried to be more open to feedback, proposals, change, and so on. Sometimes I have been impatient. Sometimes I didn't take feedback to heart. I am only human.

I presented feedback based on issues that were raised to me by a formal Global Maintainer for Solus. I won't delve into details, because frankly I don't want to air dirty laundry. Everyone is better than that, including me. But the fact is that the feedback wasn't acted on, and that was in September.

In October, additional behavior brought me to a breaking point. I basically resigned from Solus at that point, in our development channel. If it wasn't for folks reaching out, I would've done followed through.

And here we are again, with further issues not being addressed and rather than the parties accepting their part/responsibility, it's been just deflected and not acknowledged. No issues I raised were addressed, nothing I felt needed for Solus' community improvement was addressed either.

If you're asking what is next, here is what it is:

1. Budgie is not dead. Seriously. The first thing I am doing when I wake up is establishing a new Budgie organization. I will be inviting people from Ubuntu Budgie, Endeavour OS, etc. Not just to be participants, but partners. I will be carrying on Budgie 10 series and opening it more. I will be doing the same for Budgie 11.
2. Chill for a bit. Some R&R.
3. Join Ikey on SerpentOS. I know, this might surprise you. Maybe more news to come, I don't know.


I am sorry, for all of those of you that were waiting for the next thing from me. I love you all and the Solus community has been the second-best thing in my life, with the first being my wife/marriage. There are still many good hands on the Solus ship that will take care of you. I just won't be much of them.

As an aside, you can fully expect a graceful handoff of assets that I have. There will be no disruptions for the getsol.us domain. There won't be any mess with SendGrid. That wouldn't be fair to the team. That wouldn't be fair to you. If you are reading this via social networks like a retweet, Facebook post, retoot (Mastodon), then you can expect this to be the last from me. Everything else after isn't.-

Much love and be kind.

- Joshua