Since our move to embrace GitHub as our official repository, the number of project collaborators, committers, pull requesters and issue raisers has seen a welcome increase. It’s made Textpattern stronger, and has officially blurred the line between developer and user, which is marvellous.

Rewind a few years. A coder burst onto the Textpattern scene with perhaps one of the most flexible plugins ever seen: etc_query. It’s so powerful that, if you can tame Xpath, it can probably compose a symphony on your behalf.

I knew right then that we had to enlist some etc magic, and as the number of plugins and forum posts blossomed, I approached Oleg and floated the idea of him becoming a core dev. The answer: “Thank you, but not yet.”

Unperturbed, earlier this year I asked again. The response this time: “Yes, but let’s do it quietly for a while.”

So we opened up direct commit access and the results were phenomenal. Of the people who have stepped up and submitted code, and also offered insurmountable forum assistance to solve countless requests (most of them with etc_query as part of the answer!) Oleg was our secret weapon in the run-up to the release of Textpattern 4.6.2. He injected an energy that we sorely needed and bailed me out with cunning JavaScript knowledge on many an occasion. I’ve learnt a lot from him.

Since then, he’s been firing on cylinders we didn’t know existed as we work towards 4.7.0. He’s optimised, improved, debugged, and streamlined our codebase, as well as introduced new features that integrate as if they’ve always been there. Yet we still don’t know his last name. ?

But names don’t matter. What matters is his enthusiasm, good nature, level-headedness and amazing work that he brings to the entire Textpattern sphere. And for all that, we’ve snared ourselves a solid winner.

So please, albeit belatedly, give a warm welcome to Oleg/etc/bloatware as our newest official developer. We’re proud to have him as part of the team, and wish him well as he sails the good ship Textpattern.