The future of Codeigniter

Hello,

Over six months have now passed since the passing of Jim Parry.  Although I never had an opportunity to meet him or even communicate with  him via email, there's no question that he was devoted to Codeigniter and clearly he has done a great job in keeping the flag flying for Codeigniter.  May he and his family find perfect peace. 

Now I think the time has come for everyone with an interest in Codeigniter to look to the future and that means asking a few tough questions.

I realise that me bringing this up at this time may be seen as being insensitive.  If that's the case then I apologise.  However, I have just spent the best part of my day fixing faults for a client because CI3 with HMVC simply does not work with PHP7.  This happened last week, with another client.

For some of us, Codeigniter is the means by which we put food on the table.  It's not a joke.  It's not a hobby.  It's not something that's part time.  It's not something that we use to embellish our résumé.  It's something that some of us take very seriously indeed.  Some of us may not always appear on forums like this or in the realms of Github - but we are working night and day for a client base whose businesses depend on Codeigniter.

Like many of you, I know all too well the responsibility that professional web developers have on their shoulders when peoples' mortgages, companies and lifestyles depend upon things working.

Now, I don't want to labour any of this too much - particularly after what has happened - but it appears to be a fact that CI4 has taken the best part of five years to build.  The following facts are also demonstrable:

*  HMVC no longer works with CI3.

*  The guy who made the HMVC addon has disappeared and has not been actively involved with Codeigniter since 2016.

*  On a coding front, the most significant change that has been  brought to CI3 is the addition of thousands of lines of copyright notices.


The above statements do not make for pleasant reading but unless I'm very much mistaken they are accurate.  Please correct me if I'm wrong.  I'm trying to deal with things that are NOT opinions.  Let's look at the facts.

Now, IF there is some value proposition or some unique and groundbreaking feature that CI4 brings to the table then - respectfully - I don't know what it is.  However, I have not looked at it for a very long time and I'm absolutely sure that someone here will be able to enlighten me.

I had tried to contact whomever is in charge of Codeigniter to hopefully open up some sort of positive dialogue about the future of Codeigniter.  Unfortunately, the contact email address on this website does not work and produces a 'mail delivery' error.

In short, there's not much here that appears to be working.

Again, forgive me if that seems rude.  I'm not trying to be rude.  If I say something factually incorrect then please let me know. 

So, with your permission, I'd like to open up a dialogue about the future of Codeigniter.

I'm not interested in focusing on things that may have gone wrong in the past.  My ultimate goal is to understand what the vision for Codeigniter is - moving into the future.  It's a genuine question and I hope that, together, we can somehow open up a positive dialogue about matters that ought to be discussed.

If anybody feels attacked.  Don't.  I'm just a humble developer who has some legitimate concerns.  I'm a force for good.  I'd like to help.  However, I do have some questions that I'd like to ask.

If anybody has answers to the following questions then I'd be grateful:

QUESTIONS:

1.  Do you think it's acceptable to take five years to rewrite a framework?

2.  Do you think the insertion of thousands of lines of copyright notices on CI3 represents good intention or petty bureaucracy?

3.  Do you think that Codeigniter is in a stronger position - relative to other frameworks - than it was when it was owned by EllisLab?

4.  Now that five years have passed and we have some history to look back upon, how would you rate the management of Codeigniter, on a scale of one to ten, since ownership was passed from Ellislab to the University of British Columbia?

5.  Given the fact that industry leading frameworks like Angular are component driven (i.e., modular), do you think it was a wise decision for the guardians of Codeigniter to throw out the family jewels and turn their backs on modular web development?

6.  Given the fact that the web development community appears to be on the verge of moving AWAY from centralised, privately owned code sharing websites - such as Packagist and NPM - do you think it was a good idea to tether CI4 to PSR? *

7.  Codeigniter HAD the fastest benchmarks of all of the leading PHP frameworks.  It's factually provable.  Thanks to PSR-4 autoloading (as seen in CI4) those benchmarks and CI's unique position in the marketplace has now been thrown down the toilet - sacrificed in exchange for some kind of approval from a self appointed governing body who go by the name of PHPFIG.  Do you think this was an exchange that strengthened Codeigniter's position within the marketplace?

8.  Unless I'm very much mistaken there are no Codeigniter conferences, no podcasts, no official YouTube channel and not even a working 'contact us' form!  This is in stark contrast to the Laravel community, who enjoy a calendar that's packed with all sorts of live events and exciting launches.  So, please help me to understand this... by what definition do any of you think that Codeigniter has a thriving community?

9.  To anyone who is involved in the guardianship / ownership of Codeigniter, I'd like to know why you got involved.  In other words, what are your motivations?  What drives you?  What is it that makes you want to be an owner of Codeigniter?  What is it that makes you work from first thing in the morning until last thing at night (presumably) making Codeigniter better? 

10.  Given the fact that Codeigniter is now in competition against trillion dollar big tech companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon (via 'Serverless'), how do you think that's working out?  Do you think you can beat them?  Are you feeling confident?  Do you think web developers on mass are going to reject the growing assortment of frameworks that are being produced by the big tech companies and flock towards Codeigniter?  Or are the Codeigniter owners resigned to defeat and now on the verge of being demoted to some kind of niche throwback from the past?  Tell us!  I'd like to know.

11.  Finally, why should anyone use Codeigniter?  One thing's for sure - you've certainly no longer got the right to talk about market leading benchmarks.  So, go ahead.  I'd love to hear the elevator pitch.  Why should any developer choose Codeigniter? 

I open these questions up to anyone and I would be very impressed if we could discuss these matters in a positive manner.  Regardless of what your opinion may be, I hope we can all agree that we hold the best interests of the Codeigniter developers (and those who hire us!) in our hearts.

Regards,

DC


* source:  https://youtu.be/M3BM9TB-8yA?t=700