Resurrecting the Dead

Presented on
* September 20 2024 at the PHP Developer Day, Dresden, Germany. https://phpdd.org/
* October 10 2024 at ForumPHP, Paris, France. https://event.afup.org/forum-php-2024/conferencier-e-s/#3346
* November 29 2024 at WordCamp Netherlands, The Hague, The Netherlands. https://netherlands.wordcamp.org/2024/programma/
* December 6th 2024 at SymfonyCon, Vienna, Austria. https://live.symfony.com/2024-vienna-con/

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Have you ever considered what would happen when a popular open source package is abandoned ?
Now, what about when that package is one of your essential dependencies ?

This scenario is not some abstract scenario for a far away future. Projects get abandoned every day and your dependency might be next... But you can help!
Come & listen to some tales of an accidental maintainer and learn about what you can do to help try and prevent these situations from getting out of hand.

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The image on the fourth slide is copyright Tristan Elwell and used with permission.
Prints of this image can be ordered via: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/tristan_elwell/curses-inc/

Transcript

1. Resurrecting the Dead Tales of an accidental maintainer Juliette Reinders Folmer Vera Kratochvil
2. Accidental Maintainer ? ▪ Requests with Alain Schlesser ▪ PHP Parallel Lint with Václav Makeš Linnaea Mallette
3. Take Over Community Pressure  Fix CI ✓ Submit Patch 
4. Accidental Maintainer ? ▪ Requests with Alain Schlesser ▪ PHP Parallel Lint with Václav Makeš ▪ PHP_CodeSniffer ©Tristan Elwell
5. You Did What Now ? Linnaea Mallette
6. How Does This Happen ? kai Stachowiak
7. Linnaea Mallette & Circe Denyer
8. Reasons For Abandoning A Popular Project Life happens kai Stachowiak
9. Maintainer Burnout vintagevivids
10. Now What ?
11. New admin Transfer the repo Fork the repo Let it die Resurrection Scenarios
12. What Does it Mean to Be a Maintainer ? Petr Kratochvil
13. “If something "just" works, it generally means someone in the background is putting a sh*tload of effort into it to keep it running smoothly. Linnaea Mallette
14. Maintaining: Keeping Things Running
15. Maintaining: Envision The Future
16. Open For All: Bug Fixes and New Features
17. Preventing Abandonment Petr Kratochvil
18. Healthy vs Unhealthy Projects
19. Succession Management ▪ Document ▪ Activate ▪ Identify ▪ Coach ▪ Validate ▪ Promote ▪ Funding! Nicky Pe
20. Keys to the Castle ▪ Repo ▪ GH Organisation ▪ Packagist ▪ Access to domains/DNS ▪ Open Collective ▪ Social Media Accounts ▪ Etc George Hodan
21. Best Practices & Lessons Learnt for popular open source projects Vera Kratochvil
22. “Apparently, it is perfectly acceptable for companies and governments to demand that open source software used by millions complies with QA standards, security protocols etc, but it is still regarded as unseemly when the maintainers of that same software ask to be paid… Petr Kratochvil
23. Funding is not Optional
24. Do's ▪ Set up Funding Channels ▪ Dedicated Organisation ▪ Contributing Guide ▪ PRs & Protected Branches ▪ Expand CI/QA ▪ Signalling via Labels ▪ Close Quickly Linnaea Mallette
25. Lessons Learnt Off-GH Contact Pace Yourself Stick to Your Plan Say NO (a lot)
26. Struggles ▪ Slow turn-around on feedback ▪ "good enough" ▪ Lonely ▪ I don't know everything… Michal Spisak
27. PHP_CodeSniffer: Where Are We Now ? Vera Kratochvil
28. Is PHP_CodeSniffer Still Alive ? 2023 2024
29. Is PHP_CodeSniffer Still Alive ?
30. PHP_CodeSniffer Wins ▪ 11 releases ▪ Runtime support for PHP 8.2, 8.3, 8.4 ▪ Syntax support for PHP 8.2, 8.3 ▪ Performance improvements ▪ Test Coverage +10% Vera Kratochvil
31. PHP_CodeSniffer Wins ▪ New Sniff x 3 ▪ New Performance report ▪ Ability to Deprecate Sniffs ▪ Revamped Help screen ▪ Sniff Documentation Vera Kratochvil
32. How You Can Help Know Your Dependencies Contribute Funding
33. Thanks! Any questions ? https://speakerdeck.com/jrf @jrf_nl@phpc.social @jrfnl https://github.com/sponsors/jrfnl