I'd like to second Martijn's praise as well. Stefan's work over the last 6-9 months has been one of the most seriously impressive things I've seen in open source in a while: smart work, seriously done, helpful replies to questions, etc. A nice combination of diligence, innovation, and fun. I *really* enjoy using lxml and thinking about how design is influenced by the new features. (I'm going in the same direction Stefan did with the XPathModel stuff he put on Berlios.) It's really fun to put the new stuff to use. I'd also like to second Stefan's praise of Martijn, who seems to excel at launching major projects with deep impact that attract committed contributors who become leaders. I can only apologize for not being a better contributor myself. I can't possibly do Pyrex or libxml2 stuff, but I can collect FAQs, help write meaningful tests, update the website, answer questions, etc. Perhaps all of us should show our appreciation to Martijn and Stefan by trying, as a group, to match one of their individual efforts. --Paul Martijn Faassen wrote:

Hi there,

I've just updated the CREDITS.txt of lxml to reflect what had become the situation for a long time already: Stefan Behnel is currently the main developer of lxml and its maintainer, and my own role as creator and initial maintainer has diminished somewhat. I'm not disappearing and will remain involved in lxml development for the foreseeable future, but Stefan calls the shots, as he took the responsibility - this is as it should be in open source.

I recognized what was going on in december and in personal communication then gave Stefan the keys to the lxml car. He's been doing a great job with it since, and as the 1.0 release is pending we thought we should announce this officially.

I personally think Stefan's involvement is an absolutely awesome development. The most obvious reason why this is great is of course Stefan's qualities as a developer and project leader. Less obvious but also very exciting to me is that it makes lxml into a true open source project in the community sense. lxml's future is no longer dependent on a single person, namely myself. Stefan has shown great skill in both sides of managing a successful open source project: the code side and the people side.

lxml has now become one of the most powerful XML libraries in the Python world, in the area of feature support as well as in the area of performance. We came a long way in the year and almost-a-half since my initial breakthrough in getting the lxml ball rolling. On the more personal front I also met a few people I'm happy to know now, got to speak about lxml at conferences, and of course got a great XML library out of it too. Thanks to all contributors, and of course especially to Stefan, in making this possible!

Regards,

Martijn