Eventlet is at a dead end. We want to help you get out of it! #824
Description
Hi Eventlet maintainers,
We are aware that, currently, eventlet face a cruel lack of human resources. This is a growing issue since 2-3 years.
Lack of resources is a recurring problem in the economy of the open source projects [1]. Maintainers of open source projects have bills to pay and a private life. We, users of open source projects, must thanks hundred of time these maintainers, who, on their free time, carry out all these small projects which make all technology around us run on a daily basis.
The result of all this is a significant drop in activity or even a abandonment of maintenance of certain projects, due to lack of time, money, or motivation. All these reasons are legit.
Eventlet is currently in this specific case.
Eventlet is in danger. Its health and its future are threatened. The health and future of projects that rely on eventlet are threatened.
A significant part of the python ecosystem is currently in a cold sweat about its own future. Many developers see a cloud of sleepless nights looming on the horizon of their evening. Others have a painful keyboard from biting their fingers until they bleed.
Almost all Python users all around the world already used eventlet at least once, probably without even knowing it. Indeed, Eventlet alone represents more than 62 million downloads. Eventlet is downloaded more than 1,300 million times every month.
More than 32 thousand projects are based on eventlet, and among them we can cite Openstack, Celery, PgAdmin, numerous Flask and Django add-ons, etc...
If Eventlet collapses then entire parts of new technologies could collapse with it.
Growing compatibility issues between eventlet and recent versions of CPython are reaching a critical point. de facto, these problems threaten all users of this library.
- Python 3.12 fixes by hroncok #817
- tests: Drop unmaintained and unused stdlib tests #820
- Try to make CI pass tests #823
Openstack is the first victim of these issues:
We, developers from the Openstack community, offer to provide you with our help and support. We propose to come with you and strengthen your workforce and help you get eventlet back up and running for the next versions of Python to come.
To accept our help, you just have to grant writing rights to the eventlet repo to some of us. We could then help you manage reviews and PRs. We could help you manage backlogs. We could help you in managing the daily life of eventlet. You'll benefit from more resources at no cost.
We have already initiated discussions on this subject within Openstack governance.
Our long-term goal is to migrate Openstack to asyncio, however in the short and medium term we still need eventlet. Our mutual needs converge, so it would be a shame not to mutually benefit from them. It should be noted that in the long term (around 4 years), our goal will be to retire from eventlet (if everything goes as planned), and therefore, in the case that no one else is willing to maintain anymore eventlet, we will then retire eventlet. A planned retirement, hopefully with a complete migration plan to asyncio. An honorable end to a memorable project.
You can find more details about your plan in our Openstack governance discussion.
Let's go a long way together, let's save eventlet!