A core GNOME maintainer has stepped down

Christian Hergert, a Red Hat employee and a programmer who's been developing and maintaining several of GNOME's apps and libraries for more than a decade, announced today that he's no longer employed at Red Hat and will no longer maintain those GNOME projects.

Happening now

Hergert made a post on the Happenings in GNOME blog called "Mid-life transitions" where he explained that recent geopolitical changes have caused his him and his family to feel unsafe remaining in the United States. As an example of fear-instilling incidents, he recounted how a shooting that involved a US Customs and Border Patrol agent happened in a nearby city at the same time he was at a visa appointment.

He and his family have now received visas for France and will be leaving soon. "My next chapter is about focusing on family and building stability in our lives," Hergert said.

• He wanted to continue working for Red Hat while living with his family in France, but the company behind the Red Hat Enterprise Linux and community-focused Fedora wouldn't allow it.

He said this transition means he'll no longer be able to continue the GNOME development he had been pouring "beyond forty hours each week" into. That's a lot of commits.

Hergert listed all of the GNOME projects that he, until now, had been "roughly the sole active maintainer." Totaling over a dozen, they include the GtkSourceView editor, the Builder IDE, and Ptyxis, the default terminal emulator in Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.

Zooming out

Why this transition matters: GNOME 50 only just arrived, and two major distributions—Fedora and Ubuntu—are releasing next week with GNOME part of their flagship desktop environments. Core components losing their sole maintainer puts the reliability of those desktops at risk.

My take: This is a reminder that many open source projects exist only because of the good will of a single person spending overtime doing thankless work.

• It's also a reminder that threats to the freedom and safety of anyone, regardless of citizenship, has negative effects on all of us.

What's next

Hergert called in his blog post for new contributors to step up:

If you or your organization depend on this software, now is a good time to get involved. Perhaps by contributing engineering time, supporting other maintainers, or helping fund long-term sustainability.

You can donate to the GNOME project if you want, though there are many worthy open source projects out there. I also recommend fighting for the dignity and safety of all families in every country.