Episode 273: Maintainer Month 2025 with Federico Mena Quintero on GNOME

Jun 13, 2025

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Guest

Federico Mena Quintero

Panelist

Richard Littauer

Show Notes

In this special Maintainer Month episode of Sustain, host Richard Littauer chats with Federico Mena Quintero, a foundational GNOME hacker and board member. Federico shares his journey from learning image processing in high school, becoming a key contributor to the GIMP project, and founding the GNOME desktop environment. He discusses the historical context, challenges, and achievements of GNOME and open source development. The conversation delves into the importance of maintaining infrastructural software, adapting to new technologies like the Rust programming language, and the socio-economic factors influencing the open source community's demographics. Press download now to hear more!

[00:01:29] Federico describes GNOME as the “surface of your desk”- the visual and interactive layer of the Linux desktop.

[00:02:16] Federico started writing image processing programs in high school and discovered GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) and began contributing plugins. Encouraged by positive feedback, he continued developing filters and building community resources.

[00:10:20] The proprietary Motif GUI toolkit used by GIMP prompted the creation of GTK (GIMP Toolkit), a free alternative. GTK was split from GIMP and became a foundation for GNOME. Miguel de Icaza learned about modular component design from Microsoft and brought those ideas to the GNOME team.

[00:14:48] Federico explains KDE was already launched but used the non-free Qt toolkit and GNOME was created as a fully free alternative using GTK.

[00:17:58] They discuss GNOME’s long-term success which has thousands of contributors and institutional backing from its foundation.

[00:21:06] Federico reflects on his privilege. He never had to apply for his first job because he was recruited and recognizes the barriers to entry for underrepresented communities.

[00:24:32] The conversation turns to global south and diversity. Federico discusses the limitations on who can participate in open source due to time, money, and societal roles, and notes that women and people outside the Global North often face greater barriers.

[00:30:37] Richard inquires what Federico means by “maintaining infrastructure.” He explains that open source today is less about new features and more about keeping infrastructure working.

[00:32:59] Federico talks about a recent project to replace a vital but abandoned infrastructure component and emphasizes the need for sustainable maintenance strategies.

[00:36:25] Federico became maintainer of Librsvg image rendering library from C to Rust.

[00:40:00] Find out where you can follow Federico on the web.

Quotes

[00:31:10] “Software doesn’t rot, but the environment around it changes.”

Spotlight

[00:40:57] Richard’s spotlight is the book, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
[00:41:49] Federico’s spotlight is two books: Malintzin’s Choices and James.

Credits

Produced by Richard Littauer
Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound
Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound

Special Guest: Federico Mena Quintero.

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