Tags: Those of you who have been in the Openads community for a few years or more may remember Niels Leenheer. Niels is a designer and developer, who was the Openads project administrator (back in the phpAdsNew days) from 2001 to 2003. During this time, Niels led phpAdsNew through a fundamental change which formed the basis of what Openads is today. I will spend the rest of this article trying to put in perspective the importance of his contributions.
The Developer
Over the two years that Niels was active, he committed code almost 1500 times. This means that every single day for two straight years, he would commit an average 2-3 times, and that in TOTAL, he was responsible for adding or changing over 200,000 (!!!) lines of code. Ohloh estimates that phpAdsNew has 66,000 lines of code, and they estimate that this effort would take 1 person 16 years to develop.
This was a truly tremendous effort.
If this was Niels’ only contribution, he would be a hero by any standard. In fact, the actual coding of phpAdsNew was only a small part.
The Technical Writer
During these two years, Niels also put out one of the most quality manuals for an open source project that I have ever seen. O’Reilly makes fantastic books for many open source projects, but they pay people to write. These phpAdsNew manuals were written by someone who donated his time to create over 150 pages, freely downloadable. When I was deciding between phpAdsNew and Oasis adservers, the professional looking manual from phpAdsNew was a major factor in my choice.
The Moderator
Niels also provided a huge amount of support for phpAdsNew - over these two years, he answered over 2000 forum messages. Again, that means that Niels answered over three questions per day, every day - the same questions over and over again from newbies (’How do I get maintenance to work?’), installation and configuration queries, advanced bug-fixing information, and blue sky feature ideas.
What does it take to be an open source developer?
Niels found the phpAdsNew project, and added a workflow and an interface that is much better than our many competitors. Niels stuck around to nurture phpAdsNew, and help it grow.
Any developer will tell you that coding is fun, hypnotic, relaxing, and enjoyable. This is the main reason that there are many open source developers today. Some techie people watch television or play online games for relaxation. Others code. There are very few developers who will support their code, help others, and foster community.
This dedication meant every day, on average, Niels would spend 4-5 hours coding, writing, and answering questions.
Take a moment to consider how much time, effort, and sacrifice this takes - two years of supporting one of the most popular open source projects - unpaid - as a hobby.
I took a plane and three trains to meet Niels near his home town of Drachten in the Netherlands, to buy him a beer, and give him an update on Openads and the work we have been putting into the product and the community. It was the least I could do.
Congratulations
Niels told me the reason for his departure from Openads in 2003: he met a girl. They have been together since that time, and recently got married.
Please join me in congratulating Niels, and wishing him and his wife much the very best of luck in the future.
Also, Niels, thank you for all of your effort over the years. Best wishes for the future, and for the sake of your wife, may you not find another open source project to work on!
