By decibel.places on

The open source multiple developers model has worked well for Drupal - so far.

I think that module maintainers are becoming fatigued keeping up with new releases of core and also with security issues.

My beloved Webform Report module, the basis of 2 or 3 web apps I built, has been discontinued due to a security issue

What can be done? Can the community more proactively recruit help to maintain modules? Should there be a financial incentive to keep a module current? What about involvement/support from Acquia?

I personally have hesitated packaging custom code into module release because I do not think I could keep the commitment to maintain a module.

Comments

michelle’s picture

michelle
she/her
Primary language English
Location Wisconsin, USA
commented

A lot of modules are written because someone needed it or someone hired them to do it and then they decide to share it only to find out people expect them to support it and continue development on it forever. Taking care of modules can be a full time job. I only have 3 of them and I've spent hundreds of hours on them between coding and support. I don't get paid for it. I do it both because I want to give back to the community and because I use the modules on my own site. If I stopped using the modules, I don't know that I would continue working on them. It's just too much work to do for free with no benefit at all.

I don't know what the story is with WR but it looks like it has a bunch of bugs in the queue and maybe the maintainer just wasn't interested anymore. It's unfortunate, but it happens. The nice thing about open source is that anyone with an interest can take it over. If this is something that is important to you, it might be worth your time to fix it yourself (or hire someone).

Michelle

decibel.places’s picture

decibel.places commented

Michelle,

First of all I commend you for your efforts.

Whenever I am asked about developing custom code, I also ask if the client plans to release it to the community.

Most of the time, I am only adding code to Webform or Rules/Workflow, or a bit of PHP or DHTML in a theme template file or node body. I often post these snippets when i think they might be generally useful.

I am considering working on the Webform Report module (and worried that someone might call me up and say "Your code does not work anymore" or even worse "We were compromised because of your code") because a couple of apps I built rely on WR. Perhaps the best case is I may fix it and post it once - but I am having trouble keeping up with my paid plus volunteer workload as it is, so as I said, I have not been able to commit to maintaining or helping to maintain any modules.

But my question is really much more general, I am seeing more and more module maintainers claiming exhaustion and inability to keep up.

and keeping up keeps the shark swimming

~are you netsperienced?
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