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.