Moving forward with Ansible Container

[Joshua 'jag' Ginsberg]

Hey folks -

I've just returned from DockerCon 2018, the same conference where two years ago we launched Ansible Container as a public project. Time has flown.

We'd hoped that we could generate inside of Red Hat a fully funded position to develop and maintain Ansible Container. Between myself, Chris Houseknecht, and Ryan Brown, we were developing it when we had spare cycles - it wasn't any of our day jobs. However, this calendar year, all three of us have found that our day work has been so all-encompassing that we've had no time to really work on it, and Red Hat has thus far decided its resources are better spent on other work - that's fine, that's their job, and I trust them to do it. Thus the deprecation notice we posted earlier this year.

At the same time, during the last six months, interest and feedback on Ansible Container has not abated, and may have actually increased. As a creator, it's really awesome to see something you worked on take on a life of its own, and so Ansible Container ought to also. Thank you all for that.

Ansible Container is now seeking a maintainer. I'm willing and able to commit a small amount of time during my work days to helping advise and work with whomever can & will devote the time to maintaining it. I've extended a couple of olive branches to that end, but if you're interested in having a more active, consistent role in evolving the project, please reach out to me personally.

I owe this community an apology, in that I really just dropped off the map. It's a hard place as an open-source maintainer to acknowledge what you don't really have time for and when you don't have the energy to do your project justice. It's easier to be optimistic about how you're going to make time. I've fallen into that trap the last four months, and I'm sorry about that.

Thank you for your continued interest. Hopefully in short order, I'll be able to report back to you all that we've found a way to keep this project moving forward. And I hope y'all are having a stellar weekend.

-jag