RHEL UBI Base Images for RabbitMQ

[opensourceally]

Is there a plan to build rabbitmq with RHEL UBI images. Can I help build it

[michaelklishin]

@opensourceally the question is mostly not "can someone build it", it's rather "will that someone help maintain it for years".

Every new image variant or contributed feature should be seen through this lense: will the existing maintainers be on the hook for more maintenance after the initial contributor takes off and never shows up to help again?

This happens all the time around open source projects.

[michaelklishin]

@tianon @yosifkit IMO, a UBI-based image would be worth having. It also will fall onto your lap (OK, maybe ours since Team RabbitMQ helps a bit here and there with the decision making around this image),
I don't mean to offend @opensourceally personally but I have seen hundreds of cases where the initial maintainer contributes something and then never shows up again to help maintain it, answer questions, troubleshoot distribution-specific issues and so on.

Even active returning contributors sometimes go away for months for all kinds of reasons.

So the question is: do the current maintainers have enough Fedora/UBI/CentOS experience to maintain a UBI-based variant, and more importantly, a time and mental energy budget for it. If the answer is "yes", this sounds like a decent idea to me.

But I suspect that the answer is "no" because most maintainers of popular OSS projects are already contributing more than they even thought they could, being one step away from burning out. Again, speaking from ample experience around open source software of all kinds.