Offering to maintain Drupal core (@joseph.olstad)

Thanks Pol, it's been far too long since 7.67, what's holding us back? If this is an upper level decision then please be open about it so that the community has a chance to take appropriate action and make plans. Is there something that we don't know that we should know? If so, when will we know about this?

Yes but no matter how much we review them nothing will happen until there's an active core maintainer.

So solution number 1, delegate a new core maintainer with access to commit to the dev branch.

whether its myself or you Pol, doesn't matter to me, as long as it's someone who is actively going to have the final word on what goes into core and what doesn't.

currently there are not enough active core maintainers, I believe there's only one and that's FabianX, FabianX has done great work but it's been 3 or 4 months where he's been too busy.

I support Pol as maintainer as well, he and I can share the responsibility, or make one of us the one with the final word, either way as long as we have someone actively maintaining core is all that really matters. (someone with final say authority who is active).

see patch

Yes I'm 100% in favour of promoting Pol to "full" committer. I will add a patch for that.

here's a new patch, Pol as full committer,
myself and mcdruid as (provisional)

I have closed mcdruids request as a duplicate

see patch 18 in 3086286

Larowlan, this is not about me, it's about Pol getting full committer approval. This is about putting egos aside for the benefit of the community.

I am not doing this for fame or to inflate my ego, I'm doing this because we need to get things done.

Your hesitance in the other 2+ year old issue was frustrating to me because all my clients use multilingual and so many issues I've worked hard on for Drupal 7 is to fix multilingual support, i18n, entity_translation, entity_translation_unified_form, views, media, file_entity , I worked on these issues because I was tired of using 200 patches to make things work.

Now multilingual for Drupal 7 is prestine.

so I worked hard on those contrib modules (and core), now I have clients in Drupal 8 as well and my clients take multilingual very seriously.

Pol works for the European Union, they support even more languages than my clients web apps do.

Put our egos aside, get things done.

Larowlan, in Australia multilingual isn't a high priority, but in the European Union , Canada, even the United States (spanish) there's a lot of clients that take it very seriously. We can't just be leaving related issues dangling for years and bickering about insignificant details. I'm willing to make some noise when it's necessary. This is a quality that I have and I think that with Pol guiding things we can really make a lot of progress , the community has put forward amazing amounts of patches and reviews that we need to consider seriously.

So, I appologize if I rubbed you the wrong way but I don't think that in Australia that you really are able to understand and appreciate how important our multilingual priorities are.

webchick , I have openned an issue for review of promoting Pol to full committer.

This IMHO is the most important issue, my issue would be lower priority.

bojanz, if you think you're up for the task, go ahead and put yourself forward, meanwhile if we keep bickering, nothing gets done, which, imho is perfectly congruent with some peoples agenda. EDIT***My agenda is more action less talk. ***EDIT

The longer we wait while nothing gets done the more we're missing opportunities. I see an urgency to act here, if it means ruffling some feathers then so be it. I will vouch for Pol and take the pressure off of him when need be. Pol and I are on the same page here, and if McDruid can join us then I think between the three of us we can take the baton and run with it for a few releases.

My first priority is php 7.3.x and php 7.4.x compatibility, which one member of the Eastern european community has done almost 100% of the work for us.

I will continue to accept patches and review patches and plan for releases as I have done for i18n, media , file_entity , exif_custom, media_youtube , sassy , prepro , views_php , views_slideshow_swiper , and many more contrib projects.

Currently I would like to see action taken sooner than later so right now the quickest way to get us going is to move forward with Pol as a core committer. He's willing to do the work if we support him as the one that has the final word.

webchick, we operate on meritocracy, all my projects are maintained correctly, I don't leave our community dangling for months/years. Media has between 190,000 and 250,000 installs, i18n has been for a long time over 100,000 installs. i18n especially is now very stable thanks to the community and also for myself to have taken responsibility for the project. What we need is someone who is going to take the responsibility and share it with the community.

The point is, is that Drupal 7 core needs Pol, myself and McDruid to take the ball and run with it. If you want to exclude me because of reason x,y or z, I don't really care, what I care about is that Drupal 7 gets the needed attention it deserves. So that the community we serve is served. So that our clients get value, that is to me the most important thing. Yes I want everyone to feel warm and fuzzy inside but also we have to move forward and sometimes that requires breaking some eggs. If you want to make pancakes you have to break some eggs. If nothing happens, there's a risk , there's a risk if something happens, we live in a world of risk. Doing nothing is a risk, doing something is a risk. Let's take calculated risks and assign someone new and motivated as responsible for Drupal 7 .

The ideal solution here is to assign one motivated developer (Pol) with a proven track record as the final word on the Drupal 7 branch and releases (according to the normal release schedule of course and policies).

In fact, I've assigned others as maintainers of important contrib projects which has allowed me to work on other projects, this is what a good maintainer does. Sometimes the best thing to do is step aside and let someone else take over.

Q) What is the urgency for a new Drupal 7 core maintainer team?

A) To move forward with php 7.3.x and 7.4.x compatibility in the 7.x branch so that all of contrib can start testing against php 7.4.x. Once we do this we will be able to allow contrib to start testing against php 7.4.x. This core issue is blocking a big part of contrib. We have the testing infrastructure in place, let's make more use of it.

Pol and I are in agreement about priorities for D7, we have been nudging forward the same RTBC issues for more than a year. Issues that have been fully vetted, have tests and make sense.

I have exchanged quite a few emails on this subject with the community.

There is a lot of apathy. It is time to take action to reverse the apathy and rejuvinate the project.

Damien, thanks for the suggestion, I have created an issue to discuss the urgent need to take action and what needs to be done.

I am promoting myself here however I must say that MustangGB has been very helpful in the issue queues and should he put himself forward I would totally support his candidacy as a core maintainer.

Shameless plug for myself (again), two of the most challenging issues I worked on in the past 12 months have been the views_php module compatibility issue to support php 7.2.x and php 7.3.x in combination with VBO and the other was the views_slideshow_swiper upgrade to 4.x. In views_php, the create_function is relied upon heavily, it is also deprecated in php 7.2.x so I actually did a lot of work beyond drupal.org and actually submitted a merge request for the maintainers of the closure library which is used to replace the php 7.2.x deprecated create_function. The maintainers of the closure library actually helped me figure out the solution to improve the views_php patch despite the fact that they know nothing about Drupal. What this says about me is, I am willing to go beyond Drupal.org to reach a solution, I do not stop in the issue queues on drupal.org, if necessary I will go to github and work on library dependencies. Another example of this is my work on the phpsass library for the drupal sassy and prepro modules (for compiling sass using php) , I also resolved php 7 compatibility for that library and improved it.

The result of my work on the views_php issue queue is: no bugs, my clients environment works thanks to this patch with VBO and the closure library using php 7.3.x and Drupal 7 in combination with a core patch that we should already have included in a release!(nudge nudge)
Issue thread: (MustangGB helped on this issue as well, so thanks to him also)
#2274543: [7.x-1.x] Remove usage of deprecated create_function()

The other issue which I am quite proud of was the release of the views_slideshow_swiper module 4.x branch, my client paid for my nearly 2 weeks of development time to do this, not only did I improve the module but I enhanced the support for the swiper library and I worked upstream in github with the maintainer of the swiper library to fix some issues and enhance that library. The result is many drupalers are enjoying the 4.x version of this module and the enhanced responsiveness provided by the new functionality.

I could go on and on citing examples of my contributions, mostly in the past 12 months, some of the other very important things I did was release php 7.2.x /php 7.3.x compatible versions of the highly popular 'features' module, the 'diff' module, 'date_ical' , facetapi , facetapi_bonus and many more to enable php 7.3.x compatibility.

I would consider myself highly qualified as a potential core maintainer having worked full stack front end / back end, I am very familiar with the active contributors so I know who to lean on for advice and reviews if the need arises. I am not easily discouraged by obstacles, while yes I have put out some stinker releases in some cases, they were quickly followed up by fixes, as I take responsibility for things and act swiftly to community feedback. With that said, I also have many servers and instances of Drupal , build scripts, testing environments and I will definately make use of the media_dev distribution to put patches through their paces with an installation profile and a complex configuration. Not to mention, I use multilingual regularly, I have many client environments that use complex multilingual setups and I have my own sites that use i18n and entity_translation, so I test patches against environments that are not run of the mill average .

Honestly, what does Drupal have to lose by taking a chance on someone like myself, McDruid and Pol? What is the worst possible thing that could happen? Absolutely nothing that cannot be quickly undone, such as a commit or a release that can easily be followed up by a revert and another release (in the worst case scenario). It's great that Drupal 7 is stable, we all get that, but many of us that have been around for years can also appreciate a good patch and be able to assess that. We have excellent test coverage already and most of the RTBC patches either new tests or have sufficient test coverage.

Stefanos, you are missing the point, Drupal core has already had stinker releases, think of 7.50 where it nearly broke the internet. We had some necessary administrative improvements go into 7.50, in that case very disruptive but we survived and came out of it with important improvements. I can also think of Drupal 8 dependencies like twig that are beyond D8 that broke core for more than 5 hours (it was fixed in a matter of hours, twig version 1.39/1.40 broke Drupal 8 core badly albeit for only 5 or 6 hours thanks to the community efforts and collaboration we figured it out and it was quickly resolved) (we survived that too).

The point I am trying to make is yes this is core and before release we can do a lot of testing , much more than a contrib module obviously but no one is Perfect, not even David Rothstein, (he did an excellent job). The point is is that we need to move forward not backwards.

The recent title module release , I am not maintainer of title but I helped you fix the tests for it and a related regression. Why???? Why did we push forward with a release?? For php 7.2.x compatibility and also we fixed the test coverage which was nearly completely broken.

Title is not my project , but I helped quickly resolve issues from that beta2 release, not leaving the community dangling for years.

Stefanos, please show me one of the 40 projects that I maintain that has a broken release that has not been fixed rapidly with help from the community?

When have I left you dangling in the issue queues without a reasonable effort and response?

I have helped you with many entity_translation issues, reviews and an api change that I had to implement into media and file_entity (my projects) and also field_collections (nudged that fwd).

My goal is full core compatibility and 100% stability, it is the same in all my projects, compatibility with php 7.4.x and 7.3.x in all of contrib has been a huge priority of mine and I have already published over a half dozen different projects releases for that purpose. Now it is time to focus on core and unless you or MustangGB or Damien McKenna step forward I do not see any other candidates stepping forward that have a more proven track record than myself or Pol.

Step forward or step down, this is what needs to happen, step up or get out of the way and let someone new take the reines.

So more to the point, I have provided and cited many examples of where I have served the community. You need not look further than my Drupal.org profile. Over 140 issues fixed in 40 projects in the past 12 months.

This is 4 times more than FabianX the most recently active core maintainer. I am 4 times more active than he is and he has vanished for 3 months. FabianX is a great person, great developer, however I believe that I can take over his responsibilities while he takes a well deserved vacation.

Thanks @venusrising , please keep reporting on drupal.org issues for support requests and other issues, very happy to have saved you so much trouble by giving you some debugging tips and pointing you to the correct documentation.

I have spent 3 years working on the media project since Aaron passed away and after Dave Reid left the project. When I started maintaining it, the wetkit distribution which the federal Government of Canada clients use had a beta2 version of media with approximately 8 or 9 patches just to make it work correctly with multilingual. Today media works for them without patches and with approximately 200,000 installations there's very few common issues that have not already been resolved.

So in supporting the media queue I can with a high level of confidence be able to assist the community with installation and support requests such as yours. It was very good that without any patch that we resolved your issue and that you can use a tagged release on versions of php up to 7.3.x and as old as 5.3.x and every version in between is compatible.

This is the type of compatibility and support levels that I'd like to see for Drupal 7 core. Thank you for your endorsement, it goes a long way. I have confidence in the drupal community that the organisation will see what I have to offer and will prioritise the related issues here in a timely manner. While my patience is running thin I have not entirely given up hope and it is encouraging to see at least some feedback from some of the well known names in our community as well as the lesser known ones (everyone IS important, this is open source, a meritocracy that goes both ways up and down and down and up).

Hi xjm, thanks, I read through the responsibilities and project governance for core, it makes sense to me. I am looking forward to this responsibility. I will commit myself to maintain Drupal 7 until the EOL.

My philosophy here:
#3088557-16: Volunteering as a D7 core committer (@mcdruid)

As a role model to follow, I aim to emulate David Rothstein. As a core development team for D7. He gave it everything he could for several years , approximately 4 years at least, and when he was done, he notified everyone and said so and passed the torch. In no way could we say no to David Rothstein, he gave us everything he had to give and did an amazing job for several years.

During my mandate I will give everything I can give during that time and when my time is done I will immediately notify you all, my peers to pass the torch.

for further discussion about the importance of this initiative:
#3088836-9: Rejuvenate D7, a need for more time spent committing and RTBCing Drupal 7 issues

Thanks David! I would really love to pick up from where you left off. We had some excellent releases between 7.39 and 7.62 or so, since then we have lost momentum, there is catching up work to do. The performance improvements we brought in between 7.50 and 7.60 or so have brought a lot of satisfaction and I am greatful that you took that on and released that for us. Now, there is more to be done.

Since you moved on, I watched the vaccum grow in D7 core, hoping the vaccum would be filled so seeing the same thing in contrib I kept busy fixing a lot of contrib modules for php 7.3.x compatibility. Now that contrib got more attention, it is time to focus on D7 core because, as you say it is sad to see so much quality RTBC work be passed over for so long, many of the patches with your name on them, backports with tests and more.

With all this said, D7 core really is very strong and stable, but lets not take it for granted, it got that way thanks greatly to your leadership David!

I owe you David personally a lot of money for all the great contracts I have gotten thanks to your work on core directly and the community we serve! Thanks so much, my family is very greatful and for that reason I feel compelled and driven to push forward with this important initiative and responsibility!

The best way to give back is by contributing and doing so with this amazing infrastructure we have called drupal.org and everything around it.

Drupal.org it'self is run on D7 , the performance optimisations we already put in (there are more) help every member on drupal.org, probably one of or if not the largest Drupal site in terms of content, usage and importance. There is more improvements to bring in, I am qualified with provisional core maintainer experience as I worked with David so much already.

Hi Charlie ChX Negyesi, I've worked with the security team for issues on the media module and also on another issue that I cannot talk about. In addition to core and media I also collaborated on a security SA for lightbox which was published a few years ago.

I am fully aware of the responsibility and am willing to work with the security team on past and future issues involving contrib and core.

I've also completed a secure software development course with the secret service for the federal government in Canada, (the equivalent to the NSA in the united states).

Hi Damien, these are legitimate concerns and yes I acknowledge self-awareness and the need to maintain the highest standards in all communications. On the flipside of that it would be nice if there was more recognition of the silently frustrated developers that have simply just given up on the project silently without any criticism at all. I accept others criticism and I think it's also important to discuss pain points rather than shove them under the rug and pretend they do not exist. Everything I've wanted to say has been said in the linked issues here.

I also acknowledge that xjm, Larowlan , webchick raise some valid concerns , the one interaction I had with Larowlan I admit that it wasn't exemplairy, is not something to be proud of but it is one interaction among thousands of interactions and so if it helps, I do appologize to him for that, so yes sorry Larowlan that was definately a low point for me personally however it was an important awakenning also which has led to this initiative and my desire to pick up from where David Rothstein left off.

My concerns about multilingual issues being taken seriously is nothing personal it is about a global perspective and real world usage, real world clients, big clients. Nearly all of my clients value multilingual and every project I work on MUST work in all enabled languages. A large portion of my best and most productive years as a software developer have been spent making Drupal 7 (and to a lesser extent, Drupal 8) work well with multilingual and one of the improvements I pushed forward was a performance optimisation that improved page rendering by about 500% for non-default language content. English is not my chosen language, if multilingual on Drupal was beyond repair I would not be here at all, I would be on another project somewhere else. We all have different perspectives, what makes Drupal a global project is the multilingual and i18n capabilities.

The Drupal 8 core team overall is doing a great job on core and I currently have nothing major to complain about on that front.

Please again, look at the overall picture, in no way do I plan to get in the way of the Drupal 8 team or make radical changes. Small changes, one at a time.

Thanks,
Joseph Olstad

@FabianX is alive! I found someone with your name in the obituary in Germany but the dates didn't exactly line up, I had wondered if you were hit by a bus or fallen ill or had completely lost interest in the project? Good to see that it wasn't you and that you're alive and well!

If you FabianX and mcdruid can handle managing the core releases yourselves then I'm fine with continuing on as a contributor.

Again, this has never been about me or my ego, this is being concerned that in the past 5 months we have ZERO commits into D7 core, not even one in the dev branch.

IMHO, the dev branch is a safe place to put code, any commit can be reverted prior to tagging a release.

It's unfortunate that Pol has now resigned, he has been very polite and patient as a provisional maintainer. However from what I gather he was ignored and everything he was proposing was not moving forward.

So I will put this issue as closed works as designed until you or mcdruid pass the torch, at which time I will open a new issue for followup.

Thanks!

FabianX is back and mcdruid seems to be the chosen one. Let's see what they can do.

It sounds like FabianX and mcdruid could build the team that we need to move issues forward in a timely manner. Otherwise we risk fragmentation. We are stronger as a whole than individually. With that said, fragmentation is a real risk and I hope that it doesn't come to that. Drupal.org has been good to us all, let's keep the momentum going and focus on having more great success! Delay the EOL of D7, progress things forward organically, this is what I am projecting.

Thanks,
Joseph Olstad