PHP-GTK is Alive
Hard to believe it’s been over three years since I first released PHP-GTK. A community has grown around this tool, but in the last year or so I really did not pay it much attention until I read a big thread on the php-gtk-general list called “what is going on with gtk.php.net?”. And when I read it, I felt ashamed. Here were people who have come to depend on this tool, who are trying to contribute to the best of their abilities and time constraints, and who are frustrated by the incomplete documentation and lack of updates to the website, and I was absent from my duty.
Yes, when you release a piece of software into the wild, wild world, you have certain obligations and duties as the author or the primary maintainer. There is plenty of abandonware in the world already, and adding one more corpse to the pile does not help anybody. Software is only good if there is someone behind it, whether it’s a single person, a group, or a whole company. So I wrote a Letter to Community, apologized for my prolonged absence, and tried to kickstart the project again. And it worked! People came to my call for help, and now the website is getting updates, the documentation is getting new content, and I have gotten back to my responsibilities of developing code and overseeing the project at large. PHP-GTK 2 is on the horizon, boys and girls, and that’s all I’ll say for now.
