[if you need a refresher about my obsession with writing PHP based Open Source IMAP clients there is no shortage of posts on this blog going into excruciatingly boring detail]

It was about the year 2003 that I first decided to author my own Open Source software. It was both a positive decision that helped me reach future goals, and a constant source of disappointment. I dreamed of building a development community around what I was creating, something organic that would self sustain. That never happened. Over the years I built a community of incredible users and contributors, just not of the I-can-code variety. I also built the webmail client I wanted so that was cool. I repeated this cycle about every 8 years:

1. Build new webmail project
2. Interact with a supportive community
3. Do 99% of the coding and project management
4. Burn out and or start over

In the two decades since starting this ridiculous journey I have been lucky to have project supporters. They were (and are) critical to the development cycle. But the dream of attracting developers to what I was doing never materialized. Until last year. When, ironically, my time spent with the project was winding down. In this case “winding down” means basically doing nothing.

Suddenly we have a group of new devs submitting PR’s and working on stuff. At first I was like “hell yeah!” then a few months later I was like “shit I don’t have time for this”. Hence, after much delay on my part, Cypht (my latest webmail project) is rising from the ashes of my complacency, to be reborn yet again, but this time in a different way.

Our resurgence is thanks to the contributions of Marc Laporte and his development team at Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware (aka TikiWiki or Tiki). Not only have they infused new life into a stagnant project, but they also provide development opportunities to aspiring coders across the world – giving them tangible work experience that is unavailable locally. Pretty easy to get behind that 🙂

So what changes with the project? Most importantly the incredible efforts of the Tiki development team will be unleashed. Things will actually move forward after many months of delay. Releases will be frequent. Aside from that, nothing. We plan to move the project to an organization account on Github for better collaboration. I will still be involved to the extent I can be, but I will no longer be a blocker to continuous improvement.

I’m so thankful to Marc and his team. At a time when I had all but abandoned the project, they rescued Cypht from the very large no-longer-maintained trash heap of neglected Open Source software projects, and I can’t wait to see what the future brings!