Project activity & funding

[michaeljones]

I struggle to write with confidence on this as others contribute to the project but given the general lack of activity it seems safe to say that this project is largely on hold until it is better funded.

It was a fun and interesting project to make 15 years ago but now it is a large and complicated and boring code base to maintain. I acknowledge the many great efforts by various people to improve it but I'd like it to be clear that the best way to see this project move forward is for those companies that use it in relation to commercial projects to fund its ongoing development.

Given the license you are also welcome to fork it and maintain a separate version elsewhere. I think we're unlikely to hand over the maintainership to others as it is hard to vet people and supply chain attacks are a concern.

We do have $87.43 USD in our Open Collective. I will talk to the other maintainers about what work we could achieve with that but we'll need more money coming in to see further sustainable development.

I've no experience with paid open source maintenance but I would comfortable re-engaging with the project at $50 an hour and I would be on the generous side of loose with the hour tracking.

GitHub Sponsors: https://github.com/sponsors/breathe-doc
Open Collective: https://opencollective.com/brea

[AA-Turner]

Hi Michael,

I think we're unlikely to hand over the maintainership to others as it is hard to vet people and supply chain attacks are a concern.

I appreciate this sentiment, but nevertheless I wanted to make the offer of being a 'maintenence-only' maintainer -- I have little experience with C++ currently, so I'm unable to make significant feature improvements, but I recognise the importance of breathe to the Sphinx ecosystem, and hence I am willing to make compat-related fixes and handle making releases, etc. Hopefully I am somewhat able to be vetted!

Let me know if you'd be willing to accept this offer. I entirely understand the sentiment in your post -- thankless tasks etc.

Thanks,
Adam

[michaeljones]

Hi Adam, thanks for the offer. You certainly do seem to be qualified! I've had a chat with the other maintainer here (@vermeeren) who is the only one that can do signed releases at the moment and he is open to you having commit access and doing maintenance changes as needed. If you want a second opinion on anything then I'll happily weigh in and bill (our open collective) for my time as needed to the extent that I can.

@vermeeren said he is quite pressed for time at the moment but should be able to do releases if called upon. If there is a problematic hold up then we can do unsigned releases if needed.

I'll invite you as a maintainer now.

[AA-Turner]

Thank you! I have accepeted the invitation.

@vermeeren ... is the only one that can do signed releases at the moment

I will tag him at an appropriate time when all is ready for a release. The following post may be of interest also -- Sphinx used to do signed releases, but we stopped when PyPI stopped accepting GPG signatures.

https://blog.pypi.org/posts/2023-05-23-removing-pgp/

A

[rileyjmurray]

Hi Michael. Thanks for all your hard work on this project, and for making this post to keep your users informed.

I've signed up to support the project through Open Collective at a modest monthly rate. I know that this won't make a material difference for the project, but it feels like the right thing to do given how it's benefitted my work. Maybe it'll inspire others to do the same.

[michaeljones]

That is very kind of you @rileyjmurray. Much appreciated. I'm glad you've found the project useful!

[kaycebasques]

Hi, pigweed.dev relies on Breathe heavily. I will start personally contributing and will talk with the team about what else we can do.

[michaeljones]

I'm sorry for the slow response @kaycebasques. Thank you very much for the sponsorship. It is very kind of you.