Scary thought... Did you know that a large number of #php infrastructure projects are maintained by 1 single person, some 2 or 3... But the original maintainer has been doing that for more than 20 years+ what would happen if they step down?!
They will retire at some point... Who will take over? Shouldn't we invest in the future and start education on how to maintain a opensource project with millions of users?
@itsjoshbruce@jaapio@phpc If I recall correctly, that was also a failure of the ecosystem. I think npm didn’t protect against someone removing a package that many other packages depend on. I believe @packagist does protect against this by caching the packages. So, even if someone removes their repository, I think the historical packages are still cached at Packagist. I could be wrong, though.
@ramsey@jaapio@phpc@packagist: Agreed. If memory serves the extra fallout was the repo was handed over to a new maintainer and the package was updated in a less than stellar way.
@jaapio the moment someone retired result in some important questions.
Who is willing to take over?
And does the original maintainer want to give access to other people or not. (If not, is it possible to great a fork that will clearly replace the original project)
For me it was the moment to give some spare time to @phpmd and @pdepend
@heiglandreas I think @derickr maintains more, we as php developers should be worried about when it's gone... I cannot do my job without datetime, but missing xdebug would also be a pain. I'm not sure what would be the hardest thing to take over.
@derickr I'm afraid that I do not have the skills to help, nor the time to help. If I had I would love to get involved in xdebug. I did some c years ago, but that's not on the level you are at it. @heiglandreas
@jaapio thanks, the process also shows another problem. 10 people say they want to help, only 3 really did something. And now we have a fourth person we is part of the team.
@tvbeek yeah, I recognize that. It's very hard to find people that want to maintain the "boring" tools. Very developer tries to contribute once in a while on larger projects, but there are just a few interested in digging into the complexity of tools they use on a daily basis. I doubt if many are even capable of actually doing it.
@shawnhooper that's about php itself, I was talking about the tools build on top of it. Like phpunit, php_code_sniffer. They are not support by that project are they?
@shawnhooper@jaapio Here’s a document for an organization I’ve wanted to launch since around 2009, but I’ve not been able to do so. It outlines an organization that would do exactly what you’re proposing.
@ramsey I didn't read the document, but it would be great to have an equal foundation for tools that we cannot miss. There are many unseen but very important projects that would need funding. But I'm not sure money is the answer... My younger colleagues are spending time with their friends, rather then spending time on opensource.
I know I belong to a small group of people doing active contributions. But when I look around most of that group are older. The new generation does not seem to care?
@ramsey ok, I agree with your proposal, but what would we need to make this happen? From my side I'm not looking forward to being in long board meetings talking about the future of php. But if you tend to start something get in touch.
I'm pretty sure I'm next to a group of people that will immediately stand up when I ask them to join. Just for the sake of the language.
@ramsey just had my meeting, we discussed that most important is that we should make people aware about the pain. So let's start being loud about this. And start talking to people..
Not just here, but also at conferences, meetups and wherever people want to hear us.
@derickr@shawnhooper@jaapio I can view it in a private browser window without logging in. I wonder if there’s some sort of Microsoft thing that blocks access from other countries?
Right now, it's a Word doc because pretty much everyone in the business world who wants to see any sort of business plan or mission statement or anything like that will use Word and/or PDF docs.
I probably don't have the time or mentality to do much that would be useful here, but I'm happy to contribute by hosting stuff if there's ever a need. Or financially.
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