Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek wrote:
Based on those graphs, I'd say there's slow shrinking. It
appears to be
linear since ~2016. But what is interesting, is that the shrinking mostly
affects "the occasional contributor": the green top 1% appear unchanged,
the yellow top 10% barely budge, but the last 50% is clearly shrinking.
That is because your recent changes such as Modularity, Silverblue,
endorsement of Flatpak, etc., are driving new packagers away.
Some changes (e.g., Silverblue and the more or less related rush to Flatpaks
for everything) falsely make potential new contributors believe that RPM
packaging skills are no longer needed or wanted here. Others such as
Modularity actively make it harder for potential RPM packagers to
contribute. (Modules add complexity and cause problems when a dependency is
module-only.)
Kevin Kofler