The State of the News
No, this isn”t an official communique from the wild frontier that is Habari, but it is a litle missive from yours truly about his favorite little baby.
In one word, the state of the news is vibrant. In the weeks following my announcement on this very site, we have had hundreds of people join mailing lists, hang out in IRC and install, break and fix the product.
As you can see by the Google Code project page, we are now at 10 comitters on the project, and we have a rather active community of patch submitters. From where I am sitting, I couldn”t be happier about the place Habari is at right now, heck we even have the first original theme for Habari out in the wild.
There will be some more rumblings from the project site soon, and yes we are working on a Dev blog, and we are working as fast as we can to a public release. Big things are just around the corner, can you feel it in the air? I can.
So, why the move?
I am sure that is what a number of people are asking themselves… especially with the other people who have made the leap in the days since I spilled the beans here on Sillyness.
That is actually a very complicated answer for me to give, but I will try my best to give it. But before I begin with all of that, I thought I would take the time to set something straight.
I am not now, nor have I ever been ”The Core Developer”, or ”The Lead Developer”, or ”The Grand High Poobah of Development” for Habari. I am one of the core developers, and a founding developer but nothing more.
Habari is run by a core group of talented coders and designers who all have the same status and say. We rule our Kingdom of Code as equals in council, not as a King and his subjects. And with that, lets get to the heart of this matter.
In the beginning was b2
That”s right young ”uns I started out this blogging thing running b2. When WordPress hit I was overjoyed. Things were bright and shiny, and believe it or not, I learned how to “code the PHP” by hacking WP into submission.
As time went on, and my skills as a jedi grew, I began to frequent the WordPress IRC channel, and answer questions. This is how I came in contact with people like Photomatt, Molly and a host of others.
About the time I became well known in the WP community, I began speaking at ApacheCon, the conference of the Apache Software Foundation. After being around some of the smartest people in the world, I began to be irritated with the way WP was being run.
This has very little to do with the merit of how WP is run, and more to do with how much I personally resonated with the Apache Way. Rich speaks about this much more eloquently that I can, so just read his stuff and come back, I”l be here… promise.
Suffice it to say, I felt as though I needed to make a change. Thankfully I found 3 people, each my better in a thousand ways, to join forces to birth what you now know as Habari.
What this means for me personally
Make no mistake, this is not a light decision that I have made. In a very real way, all that I have now is thanks to the community that surrounds WordPress… developer and user. My current job, the chance to write a book… the blessing of a wonderful home and the security and love that I am able to give my wife and son all find, at least in part, their beginnings in WordPress.
I am more thankful, blessed and lucky than one person deserves to be, and it is because of all the people I have been able to know through WordPress. You have my undying gratitude and support always. But as I said, it was time for a change. And so we come to the end of this overwrought missive, I think.
Summing it all up
I have left WordPress because I wanted to create something new and amazing, with amazing people; the scary thing is that the number of amazing people I get to work with literally doubles everyday.
My personal thanks to the core development team of WordPress for making a wonderful product that I had the privilege of helping to make better in various, small ways; and for helping to make a passable programmer out of me.
I hope that we (Habari and WordPress) can work together in the months and years ahead, to make all of our work that much better; because in the end we are here to serve our users, not our egos.
Changes around Sillyness
If you are one of my more astute readers, you might have noticed that there have been some changes around these parts since Tuesday the 2nd of January.
Sillyness is now powered by Habari, a next generation blogging tool being developed by some familiar faces… that aren’t ready to have fame and fortune knock on their door just yet, so I won’t link to them.
Needless to say I am one of the core developers, and I am in love with this product. We decided to eschew legacy concerns and blaze forward with more cutting edge technology (read: PHP 5, entirely object oriented, full ATOM Publishing Protocol support and dead easy AJAX integration just for starters.)
We are still a couple of weeks away from a developers release, but I was too excited to wait any longer. I also believe that if I use the software everyday I will identify more places to improve it… and possibly stumble upon new ideas.
Needless to say, expect some warts here and there as I iron out the rest of the move.
I am sure there will be people wondering why I have left WordPress behind as my blogging platform of choice, and trust me I plan on covering it in detail in a later post, but for now I need to get back to work.