Find a Second-in-Command and Future Maintainer

[ejmr]

Next week I will be out of town and will have little time to address any issues or pull requests for PHP Mode. That has got me thinking about finding a 'second-in-command', someone I can count on to step up and manage PHP Mode in my absence. Finding someone for that role will also be important because I will not manage PHP Mode forever. As my own company starts to grow I will have less and less free time for PHP Mode and will end up handing over control to another developer. I would like to have one or more people available and willing to take over my role as maintainer in that event. That way PHP Mode will not sit stagnating, waiting for someone to come along and pick it up as I did back in 2011.

I would have faith and confidence in many of the people who have contributed to PHP Mode. But it is not my right or desire to explicitly nominate any second-in-command and/or future lead maintainer. It must be a volunteer.

I have no intentions to stop maintaining PHP Mode any time soon. But in the interest of planning ahead I want to ask: is anyone interested in taking over in my absence?

[rakotomandimby]

I'm a user of Emacs and I'm more a sysadmin, DevOps for PHP and Java developpers.
I would be happy to be your second.
I have some draawbacks: I am not very good at Lisp programming but that could evolve.

[ejmr]

Thanks @rakotomandimby for being interested, and thanks to the people who have emailed me directly.

My plan is to continuing maintaining PHP Mode and working together with users and developers for the rest of 2013, at a minimum. I would enjoy maintaining the project in 2014 too. But I have to be honest and say that around December 2013 I will be seriously thinking about whether or not to step away and let someone else take over. (Programmers can already 'take over' by forking the project, and I don't own PHP Mode in any way, but I assume everyone knows what I mean when I say 'take over'.)

Because of my intentions, anyone interested in maintaining PHP Mode has at least half a year to improve their Emacs Lisp skills. And that said, whoever takes over in my absence does not need to be a Lisp master, because I certainly am not. Maintaining PHP Mode has taught me a lot about Emacs Lisp thanks to great contributions from a lot of great programmers. I would have no concerns with an inexperienced Emacs Lisp programmer taking over because the project has been a big learning experience for me, and thus I know it would be the same for that person.

In my opinion, anyone who volunteers to take over PHP Mode should have some experience with Emacs Lisp. But the amount of experience is not nearly as important as that person's ability to communicate. I have spent more time on PHP Mode talking to other developers and coordinating efforts than I have writing code. So I believe the next maintainer should have great communication skills above all else. But that is only my opinion; I may specifically choose someone to take over the project during any short-term absences in the near future, but whoever completely replaces me ought to be someone chosen by the community of users and developers, not chosen by me.

[Skrath]

It would probably be a good idea to have at least 2 people capable of managing the project for backup purposes regardless of who's "in charge". I think we're all familiar with projects where the lead dev suddenly "disappeared" and nobody was in position to easily help out or manage things.

[ejmr]

Great point Chris. Also this is a better time than any to apologize for the state I left certain projects when leaving the company we used to work at together, since I walked away and left you and others to take over the messes I had created. So I am sorry about that.

[kalifg]

I'm happy to try to help carry some of the load. Even if I'm not the best choice to take over administration of the project (my friend and I still need to find time to transition people still using php+-mode over here as we have done), I do know the php-mode code intimately and will be happy to help answer questions in that regard.

[ejmr]

Thanks Michael. Personally I think you would do a great job, and PHP Mode will benefit from your presence regardless of who maintains it in the future.

[emestee]

Checking in here. I am currently studying the mode source.

[dhaley]

@ejmr Thanks for 1.1.3. I intend to help with php-mode features in 2014. My availability is a few days every three months or so.

I don't see php or emacs going away anytime soon, so hopefully more will use and help improve this mode.

[ejmr]

Thanks @dhaley, that will be great. I agree PHP Mode won't be going away any time soon, and it'll help the project to have more people at the helm that actually use PHP more than I do these days. It's something I wrote about today: http://ericjmritz.name/2013/12/03/php-mode-1-13-and-a-retrospective-of-sorts/

[ejmr]

Meant to close this a looooong time ago since @syohex has done me the wonderful favor of taking over as co-maintainer.