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PDA Project Update
Introduction
Hello PDA community members,
My name is Matt Scott, and I am the owner of Azorian Solutions, a consultancy for the Internet Service Provider (ISP) industry. I'm pleased to announce that I have taken ownership of the PDA project and will be taking over the lead maintainer role, effective immediately.
Please always remember and thank both Khanh Ngo and Jérôme Becot for their efforts in keeping this project alive thus far. Without the effort of Khanh creating the PDA project and community, and the efforts of Jérôme for holding up the lead maintainer role after Khanh had to step down, this project would not still be alive today.
With that being said, please read through all the following announcements as they are important if you're an active PDA user or community member. I intend to make many great enhancements to the project, but it could be a bumpy road ahead.
Project Maintenance
As it stands today, contributions to the project are at a low. At this point, there is a rather large backlog of issues and feature requests in contrast to the current maintenance capacities. This is not to say you should lose hope though! As part of this project transition, some additional contribution interest has been generated and I expect to attract more with the changes I'm planning to make. In the near future, I may by-pass some usual maintenance processes in order to expedite some changes to the project that have been outstanding for some time.
This is to say however that unless the project attracts a healthy new contribution base, issues may continue to pile up as maintenance capacity is rather limited. This is further complicated by the fact that the current code base is harder to follow naturally since it largely lacks uniformity and standards. This lack of uniformity has lead to a difficult situation that makes implementing certain changes less effective. This status quo is not uncommon with projects born how PDA was born, so it's unfortunate but not unexpected.
Change of Direction
In order to reorganize the project and get it on a track to a future that allows it to contend with other commercial quality products, I had to make many considerations to the proficiencies of two unique paths forward to achieve this goal. One path forward is seemingly obvious, continue maintaining the current code base while overhauling it to shift it towards the envisioned goal. The other path is a fresh solution design with a complete rebuild.
The answer to the aforementioned decision might seem obvious to those of you who typically favor the "don't reinvent the wheel" mentality. I'm unclear of the details surrounding the original use-case that drove the development of this project, but I don't believe it was on-par with some use-cases we see today which include operators handling many tens of thousands of zones and/or records. There are many changes that have been (sometimes) haphazardly implemented which has lead to the previously mentioned lack of uniformity among other issues. To put it simply, I'm not sure if the project ever had a grand vision per se but instead was mostly reactionary to community requests.
I believe that the current project has served the community fairly well from what I can tell. I know the product has certainly helped me in my professional efforts with many environments. I also believe that it's time to pivot so that the project can realize it's true potential, considering the existing user base. For this reason, I am beginning the planning phase of a project overhaul. This effort will involve a complete re-engineering of the project's contribution standards and requirements, technology stack, and project structure.
This was not an easy decision to come to but one must appreciate that there aren't as many people that can get very excited about working on the current project code base. The current project has many barriers to entry which I intend to drastically impact with future changes. The reality is that it's easier to gain contribution participation with a new build effort as it offers an opportunity to own a part of the project with impactful contributions.
Project Enhancements
Since this is the beginning of a rebirth of the project so to speak, I want to implement a new operational tactic that will hopefully drive contributions through incentive. Many of us understand that any project, needs a leader to stay on track and organized. If everything were a democratic process, it would take too long and suffer unnecessary challenges. With that being said, I do believe that there is plenty of opportunity through-out various development phases of the project to allow for a democratic process where the community contributors and members can participate in the decision-making.
The plan to achieve the aforementioned democratic goal is to centralize communications and define some basic structured processes. To do this, more effective methods of communication have been implemented to allow those interested in contributing to easily participate in fluid, open communication. This has already been proving to be quite effective for exchanging ideas and visions while addressing the issue with contributors living in vastly different time zones. This is effectively a private chat hosted by the PDA project using Mattermost (a Slack-like alternative).
Even if you aren't in a position to directly contribute work to the project, you can still contribute by participating in these very important and early discussions that will impact the solution engineering. If the PDA project is an important tool in your organization, I encourage you to join the conversation and contribute where applicable your use-cases. Having more insight on the community use-cases will only benefit the future of this project.
If you're interested in joining the conversation, please email me at admin@powerdnsadmin.org for an invitation.
Re-branding
As part of this project transition, I will also be changing the naming scheme in order to support the future development efforts toward a newly engineered solution. The current PDA project will ultimately become known as the "PDA Legacy" application. This change will help facilitate the long-term solution to take the branding position of the existing solution. Another effort I will be making is to get an app landing page online at the project's new domain: powerdnsadmin.org. This will act as one more point of online exposure for the project which will hopefully lend itself well to attracting additional community members.
Contribution Requirements
Another big change that will be made with the new project, will be well-defined contribution requirements. I realize these requirements can be demotivating for some, but they are a necessary evil to ensure the project actually achieves its goals effectively. It's important to always remember that strict requirements are to everyone's benefit as they push for order where chaos is quite destructive.
Closing
I hope these announcements garner more participation in the PDA community. The project definitely needs more help to achieve any goal at this point, so your participation is valued!