Add daily email for 2024-04-15

A note to open-source software maintainers

source/_daily_emails/2024-04-15.md

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+---
+title: A note to open-source software maintainers
+date: 2024-04-15
+permalink: archive/2024/04/15/a-note-to-open-source-software-maintainers
+tags:
+    - software-development
+    - drupal
+    - php
+    - open-source
+cta: ~
+snippet: |
+    If you want people to use your open-source software, make it easy to use and update.
+---
+
+I recently updated a website to the latest version of Drupal.
+
+Doing so introduced a bug in a contributed module I was using.
+
+A fix was committed to the 2.x branch of the module, which is still in an unstable alpha phase, and the issue was closed.
+
+There was no fix for the stable 1.x branch.
+
+There was no fix backported to the 1.x branch.
+
+There are breaking changes between the 1.x and 2.x branches that require me to update custom code that uses the module, which I don't want to do yet, and I don't want to update to an unstable version.
+
+If you maintain open-source software, don't force people to update too quickly.
+
+If you can, make it easy for people to update to the next major version by keeping breaking changes to a minimum and providing time and clear instructions for doing so.
+
+If these are too difficult, it could discourage or prevent people from using your software.