Missing Bits

Fig 1. A tweet I tweeted

It's 1989, I'm 5 years old, my hair is terrible and my shorts are as long as my socks. It's the end of my third day of school, and as I queue to leave the classroom, I notice a boy standing at the doorway holding a large colourful bag. As the queue progresses, gossip fills the air and excitement grows. I get to the front of the queue and am told to put my hand in the bag and grab something. I did so, quickly and rushed, or was pushed out of the door by the queue ... I'm outside, and can hardly believe that I, without having to perform any parlour tricks like tidying my bedroom, have in my possession a free bag of candy.

Getting things for free is really awesome. But, we're not five years old anymore and understand that nothing is really free, least of all candy. Somebody pays for everything; The only questions are who, and how.

The freedom that allows us to give software away for free is one of the most valuable things we have, for those of us that have it.

We can't know when we decide to release some software how popular it will become. We release it in the hope it's useful, and in the hope that any sustenance the project requires beyond that which we are willing (or rather practically able) to provide will, in the long term, be provided organically by the community that uses it.

This ideal typically works: While no money is changing hands, the community is paying, with time and expertise, to push the software forward.

The opposing forces in OSS are the force applied by peers to provide ever greater software on one side, and on the other side the forces applied by having to hold down a full time job combined with the force applied by all or one of your family, friends, and train shop, to spend more time with your family, friends, or toy trains respectively.

For every project that has reached equilibrium and sustains itself ideally, there are hundreds that don't because they can't. Eventually these projects are at risk of being poorly maintained, abandoned, or worst of all are no longer able to provide what they provide today for free.

I'm going to take Xdebug as an example here, but the same is applicable to many open source projects that we all use ...

When Derick released the first version of Xdebug 17 years ago, he started out a provider. While it took a lot of expertise to release the first version, nobody at that time would have called him an expert.

For the first couple of years until 2004, Xdebug was developed in his spare time. In 2004-2009 he worked at eZ Systems and was allowed to work on Xdebug as part of his contract. The time allowed or used was roughly (and from fuzzy memory of a long time ago) 10-20%.

When I asked Derick if during those 5 years, he worked on Xdebug less during his free time, he said no "because there is fuck all to do in Norway". I think this outlook is mostly a result of his cheerful disposition. I've asked a few people that have been allowed to work on OSS as an employee the same question and got the same response - it doesn't tend to reduce the amount of free time you use for OSS.

For the rest and the vast majority of the last 17 years, every patch, fix, improvement, and new version of Xdebug was written, tested, and released when Derick should have been doing normal life things.

At a certain point, and as a result of the entire community asking questions of Derick and demanding solutions and improvements to the problem of debugging PHP software, he transitioned to a domain expert.

It so happens that I personally have some expertise in this area, and so when I say that the number of domain experts in this field can be counted on your fingers, you can believe me: It's not an exaggeration to say that we have in Derick a world class domain expert.

In these circumstances, where the skills and knowledge required to maintain some software simply do not exist in the wider community, and are contained only within the expert (or possibly experts) we have created, equilibrium is obviously not achievable.

Through sheer passage of time and number of users the pressure on Derick, or any OSS project maintainer in a similar position, has increased to almost unmanageable proportions that could not have been forseen.

I've used Xdebug as an example here because I know a bit about the area, and it's possibly the most glaring example in the ecosystem of a project that without funding will struggle to be maintained at a reasonable pace, and can't reasonably be developed or improved. The fact is that many such projects, pillars of the ecosystem which we all rely on to make a living, are in the same position.

I hope, I've said enough words to convince you that making monetary contributions or approaching your employer with a request to make monetary contributions to projects that your income or business relies upon is the right thing to do, and in some cases necessary for the ongoing health of the project.

Identifying maintainers that need help is simple - It's the maintainers that are asking for help ...

Peace out, phomies ...