The Maintainer’s Lifecycle¶

That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself? — The Farthest Shore, Earthsea Cycle Book 3, Ursula K. Le Guin

In my PyCon Italia 2023 keynote, Open Source for the long-haul, I asked maintainers to think what the long haul looked like for their package.

I asked:

Your project is your baby — I get it…

But zoom out — I don’t know a decade…

• Are you still going to be triaging every ticket.

• Are you still going to be merging every PR.

• Are you going to be doing every new release?

Unless you explicitly mean to wind up your package, it’s inevitable that at some point you need to take on help.

So maybe we should get on with that?

Once we’re comfortable as maintainers, do we start to see ourselves handing that off?

And if we do, what, of all the things we do to keep our package going, can we open up to prospective maintainers, so that they can begin to get their feet wet?

As the waves come up and fall again, are we enabling a sustainable lifecycle in our contributions?

Want to chat about this? Over here 👋