Back in June 2005, I noticed that we were lacking some tarballs due mails for the GNOME 2.11 release cycle and I sent a small mail to get this fixed. This is how I got trapped: after this mail got read by Mark McLoughlin, he suggested I could replace him on the GNOME release team. A few years later, in September 2007, Elijah chose to pass his GNOME release manager hat to me. And now, in April 2011, it's time for me to pass the baton: Luca Ferretti is replacing me on the release team (he joined as a trainee in the past few months), and my good friend Frédéric Péters becomes the new GNOME release manager.

Release Team love

Picture by Frédéric Péters

I'm really happy of what we did as a team during those nearly six years. I'm more than happy, actually: I'm proud of it. Everything that happened between 2005 and 2011 is of course the achievement of the whole community, but I do believe the release team played an active part — even if not always visible — in what we produced. Of course, there's one failure I will never forgive myself: I never managed to get French adopted as official language for the project, even though I believe good progress was achieved on this front.

Down with release team!

Picture by Claudio Saavedra

Leaving the release team is not a recent decision; I actually took it back in 2009. I clearly remember sitting in a meeting room in Gran Canaria during the Desktop Summit, and deciding that I would leave the release team once GNOME 3.0 would be out. And a year later, in the Hague, when it became obvious that we would reschedule GNOME 3.0 to March 2011, I wondered if it meant I should stay six more months or if I should leave after 2.32. But I couldn't leave before 3.0, so I chose to stay.

The decision being taken for a long time doesn't make it easy, though, as the release team has been part of my identify for a long time now. However, it's time to move on.

I support the release team

Picture by Ryan Lortie

I'm of course sad to see my evil twin leave at the same time, as well as another member of the french consp^W^Wteam. But there is new blood coming in to replace us, and I'm convinced they will contribute to make the GNOME 3 era a very successful one. And with Frédéric Péters taking the release manager hat, I can only say I'm leaving the release team with confidence that the team will stay strong!