I am glad that they are making progress and that more developers are joining! However the account balance on Open Collective is over $100k and I am wondering how they will use that money. It is probably very difficult to start paying someone in a volunteer project. The pmOS team was in a similar position and started paying people for upstreaming code, because it is the most unfun part while most important task in the project. They also recently hired a contractor for some long standing complicated issue, which I also believe is money well spent. I just think that they need to start spending this money or people will stop donating, which could lead to some funding bottlenecks in the future.
We're working on it! Our current expenses are public - currently, we pay for Fedora Asahi Remix integration work and sponsor hardware for many contributors.
Going forward, the board has already greenlit proposals to contract kernel development with a focus on upstreaming and new hardware enablement, and we're hopeful once those projects start progress will speed up. Having contributors in different jurisdictions with different day jobs can add some growing pains for a project like this, but it's all in the pipes :-)
In a perfect world, we would love to pay for ongoing development & maintenance. Unfortunately, $100k is nowhere enough to pay competitive salaries to a team of full-time low-level developers! As always in life, we work with the budget we have, not the budget we want. Details short-term TBA and long-term TBD.
Good to hear that more people are donating to further the project. So far and in the past year I did not have any problems with Asahi Fedora, and it has been my daily driver on an M1 MBP. At home even USB-C => DP worked on fairydust kernel, but it's lack of stability doesn't personally bother me as my MBP has an HDMI port (I got lucky there) :)
JulianWgs | 20 hours ago
I am glad that they are making progress and that more developers are joining! However the account balance on Open Collective is over $100k and I am wondering how they will use that money. It is probably very difficult to start paying someone in a volunteer project. The pmOS team was in a similar position and started paying people for upstreaming code, because it is the most unfun part while most important task in the project. They also recently hired a contractor for some long standing complicated issue, which I also believe is money well spent. I just think that they need to start spending this money or people will stop donating, which could lead to some funding bottlenecks in the future.
alyssa | 13 hours ago
We're working on it! Our current expenses are public - currently, we pay for Fedora Asahi Remix integration work and sponsor hardware for many contributors.
Going forward, the board has already greenlit proposals to contract kernel development with a focus on upstreaming and new hardware enablement, and we're hopeful once those projects start progress will speed up. Having contributors in different jurisdictions with different day jobs can add some growing pains for a project like this, but it's all in the pipes :-)
vsever | 13 hours ago
Welcome to Lobsters! Will the contracts be tied to specific upstreaming milestones, or are you looking to fund ongoing maintainer time?
alyssa | 12 hours ago
In a perfect world, we would love to pay for ongoing development & maintenance. Unfortunately, $100k is nowhere enough to pay competitive salaries to a team of full-time low-level developers! As always in life, we work with the budget we have, not the budget we want. Details short-term TBA and long-term TBD.
incanus | 7 hours ago
Welcome! You might want to look into a hat.
JulianWgs | 10 hours ago
Welcome to Lobsters and thank you for the helpful reply. Have fun & good luck :)
omidmash | 22 hours ago
Good to hear that more people are donating to further the project. So far and in the past year I did not have any problems with Asahi Fedora, and it has been my daily driver on an M1 MBP. At home even USB-C => DP worked on fairydust kernel, but it's lack of stability doesn't personally bother me as my MBP has an HDMI port (I got lucky there) :)