Add daily email for 2023-12-05

Open-source encourages open-source

src/content/daily-email/2023-12-05.md

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+---
+title: >
+  Open-source encourages more open-source
+pubDate: 2023-12-05
+permalink: >
+  archive/2023/12/05/open-source-encourages-open-source
+tags:
+  - software-development
+  - contribution
+  - open-source
+  - drupal
+  - php
+---
+
+[In yesterday's email][yesterday], I mentioned the Private Message Queue module - a contributed Drupal module we wrote for a project as part of a contribution-first workflow.
+
+In our experience, doing that and releasing Private Message Queue as its own open-source project encouraged more open-source contributions.
+
+We started to ask questions like, "Which user should the messages be sent from?".
+
+## System Users
+
+This led us to create the [System User module].
+
+Inspired by system users in Linux, it provides a way to identify and retrieve system users that aren't tied to individuals' accounts and without relying on "magic" user IDs.
+
+But what if a website doesn't have a system user?
+
+## Null Users
+
+This led to the [Null User module].
+
+Following the Null object pattern, if there isn't a system user, instead of returning `NULL` or `FALSE`, you return a null user that you use in the same way, though they'll have default empty values and won't perform any actions.
+
+This pattern simplifies your code as you don't need to check for `NULL` or `FALSE` values.
+
+## Here's the thing
+
+If I remember correctly, as part of the project, we created and released around ten new contributed modules to Drupal.org.
+
+We were able to move straight onto the next phase of the project.
+
+We didn't need to clean them up or refactor them beforehand. We didn't need to dedicate any additional time as they were already released.
+
+[null user module]: https://www.drupal.org/project/null_user
+[system user module]: https://www.drupal.org/project/system_user
+[yesterday]: https://www.oliverdavies.uk/archive/2023/12/04/writing-contrib-modules-as-glue-between-your-custom-code