Introduction
Hello everyone. It is with a heavy heart that I am announcing that I will be stepping down as lead developer for Composr CMS, effective April 1, 2025. Despite the coincidental date of April Fool's, this is not a joke.
As of April 1, 2025, I will no-longer be engaged in the following roles:
- Regular development of Composr CMS (outside of specific needs of clients and voluntary development)
- Frequent / quick responses on composr.app or on the issue tracker
- Leading the direction of Composr CMS (at least, on my own)
- Making Composr CMS releases (I won't have time to go through the test suite and upgrade testing)
I will, however, maintain the following roles:
- Necessary maintenance and moderation of composr.app
- Assisting member of the Board (during the transition period)
- Periodic general guidance on the forums and Gitlab Issue tracker
- Professional Composr support on a paid contract basis through my company PDStig, LLC
- Merging in fixes and improvements into Composr's code as I do them for clients
- Assisting with Composr development, but only when I can afford to and have the time
What Happened / Why?
My economic situation has taken a drastic change for worse. It is no-longer viable for me to continue regular development of Composr CMS and fulfill the role of Lead Developer, outside of whatever others are willing to contract me to do, and anything I'm willing to do in my spare time. Doing otherwise would mean I won't be able to pay my bills. Furthermore, this project should be more about you, the community, and not about me or about Chris.
I am therefore stepping down so I can focus my attention on other job opportunities and to open up the project and its development for others to get involved.
What happens now? Who is lead developer?
As per the new Constitution, there are no lead developers anymore. Instead, we have members of the Board, and within the Board are your Core Developers. The Core Developers for now are myself and Chris Graham. We are trying to get rid of the language of "lead" developer because it implies we do most of the work. And that is not the intention of the role; most development should be community-driven. Core Developers oversee the repository, issue tracker, and merge requests, and also enforce the coding standards. As "core", we provide the foundational framework on which everyone else can develop and contribute to the project.
Now, more than ever, we need people to assume the role of community developers to help further this project along. Please check out all the ways you can contribute to Composr (development is only one of many ways). And now, with more incentives to do so than ever on composr.app (points, voting power, achievements, karma), I'm hoping these will help encourage community collaboration.
Regarding version 11, development will likely slow down at the end of the month (since I was by-far the main developer working on it) unless community developers offer to help pick up the slack or a few people contract me (or other people) to keep regular development going. I'm also working hard to get 11 RC1 released before the end of the month.
Version 10 might see one to two more patch versions in the future as I have clients using v10 who contract me to fix bugs they find. But that may ultimately be up to Chris or any other developers who join the project as I won't want to be responsible for releases. It's also going to be tricky trying to get those updates out now that compo.sr is in a read-only state. We will figure it out and let you know the plan.
Is this Permanent?
The role of lead developer not existing anymore is permanent per the Constitution. My situation, and me taking a step back from Composr development, is indefinite but probably not permanent. Over the course of time, I expect that my engagement in the community and in development will come and go depending on my life circumstances.
In Closing
Hopefully, I will be able to return to the project in the future. But for now, given my economic situation, I would be disrespecting myself if I exhausted my time and energy doing free development for Composr, even if I enjoy doing it, when I must focus on continuing to afford my bills. Unfortunately, a lot of Open Source developers make that choice and end up getting very little appreciation for their work. Remember what happened to Core.js. I do not want to end up on that path myself.
But I do want to give a huge thank you to everyone who has supported me throughout this process. It has not been easy transitioning when Chris had to step away in 2023 (and before). And it's not easy making this transition now. Your guidance, your bug testing and issue reporting, and your feedback has made Composr what it is today. I also cannot thank Chris enough for everything he's done to ensure continued development of Composr even when he was away.
Comments
Patrick has been a great help since I had to step back and kept the project moving forward, incorporating a lot of what I envisioned.
I had been paying Patrick to continue my work (this isn't news, but you may not know it). It was a pretty easy decision: with my new job, my pay went up substantially, and I always had 'tithed' a proportion of my potential earnings to drive Composr forward so in some sense this wasn't any different financially for me.
The reason Patrick is now themselves having to step back is I decided I could not longer continue pouring my money in when the blocker to for further progress is me. Patrick has essentially gotten as much progress as they could do without me finishing certain stuff off. I didn't intend it to continue for long, I'd intended it to be more of a 6 month thing while it's been over 2 years of me funding development financially. Patrick had come to have to work on a number of things that I would consider feature creep, because things that needed to get done were just waiting on me, and I also was not able to spend time checking in on things properly.
But also now on the financial side of things:
I now have 2 kids, planning for 3. Inflation continues to bite, along with general costs of being the 'breadwinner'. I had concerns a few weeks ago about how the economy was going to go - which are now more than apparent over the last week. I have much bigger concerns longer-term (I think we are going to slide very backwards, other's may disagree but I feel strongly about it and don't want to go into politics here). I also realized I will need to move to a more expensive area at some point, as where I live has been going down-hill education-wise (there was just a referendum on school funding which cemented a very negative fate for the area which has already been doing poorly), and I need to get my kids into decent schools when they are older if they are to have the same quality of life I have had. So I really can't keep pouring in money when I need to be saving it up for my kids' future. I never cared about wealth, but now I have to.
What I do need to do is find time to contribute myself. Which has been extremely difficult because I've had endless unexpected challenges for years. The last few months I've been chronically sick after my daughter started preschool and started bringing multiple illnesses back per week. The last update I gave on the compo.sr forum kind of covered this ground - those without kids, don't tend to realize just how hard it is, because those with kids are too frantic to be talking about it online. When you have them, it hits you. But I have additional problems that I can't really go into online that make it so I am having to do all this on extra hard mode. I am also trying to stay healthy: I managed to get myself into great shape until we had kid number 2, then I barely was able to even leave the house for the past year (I mean that literally). So I also need to look after my health.
So all this means it has been very difficult to find time to contribute because I can't compromise on my family's situation or my health situation. I actually intended to wrap v11 up last year when I had some extended family leave. But I had a catastrophic water leak into my newly finished basement, and the insurance wouldn't properly cover it, and my reclamation company bailed on me, so I had to be doing a whole load of DIY and project management which used all the time I had, sadly.
I intend to book some vacation time off and blitz things. Being able to book that vacation time is also difficult, due to what my full time employment is requiring of me - which also I cannot openly talk about I'm afraid (what I can say is I now have a very intense 'silicon valley' job with a lot on my shoulders).
I totally understand why this post will be disheartening and some will not want to stick with it. People should make whatever decisions make sense for them. I also understand some will not just want me to 'wrap up v11', but rather continue to be around to give support and so on. Ultimately like Patrick said, this is a community project now, and both Patrick and I have big limits on us. I apologize for anyone feeling let down, and for being naive on how difficult it would get with kids, but it is what it is.
The world needs Composr CMS more than ever though, given how things are (just look at the debacle around Wordpress's management, and I have insider knowledge that things aren't going well elsewhere too). Many Open Source projects shut down silently, and Patrick and I have both been provided updates, even though things are slow, so take that as something positive.
Chris Graham will be doing what he can, but it probably won't be much. Composr CMS needs community developers now more than ever. So if you know anyone who is interested, have them come on over!