Time flies when you’re having fun! On March 1st 2011, 9 years ago, I joined Commerce Guys, a French-American company with big dreams. In late 2014 I started working on Commerce 2.x, a ground-up rewrite of Drupal Commerce targeting the upcoming Drupal 8 platform. In early 2016, after several rounds of VC funding, Commerce Guys became Platform.sh, while Ryan Szrama, Matt Glaman and myself started Centarro, a company solely devoted to the dream of Drupal-based eCommerce. In 2020 that dream is alive and well. Centarro has over 10 people in the US, Hungary, Serbia, and Israel. Commerce has seen many stable releases, and now has over 10 thousand D8-based installs, hundreds of payment gateways and thousands of community members, contributors, and developers.
Running an open source project for the past 5 years has been incredibly rewarding. From working with early adopters and chasing that mythical first stable release, to iterating on stable software with a mature and ever-growing community, each phase has had its challenges. Nowadays it’s primarily about weighing the benefits of new features against their maintenance cost, and balancing the needs of the community versus the needs of the company.
With my original goals around Drupal Commerce achieved, it is time to step back, get some rest, and provide space for the fresh energy of my colleagues, Matt Glaman and Jonathan Sacksick. Matt has been my co-maintainer since day one, and has been leading our new Commerce API initiative. Jonathan has been the co-maintainer of Commerce 1.x, and with D7’s approaching EOL has been focusing more and more on D8, leading the work on our Pricelist and Invoice modules. Together, they have been working with some of our largest clients, and I can’t imagine a better duo in charge.
My personal plans are to take a 6 month sabbatical, focusing on travel and the occasional personal project. I have a decade of vacation plans to fulfill, so wish me luck! I remain an advisor at Centarro, helping keep an eye out on clients and products both old and new.