[Matplotlib-announce] ANN: Michael Droettboom, matplotlib lead developer

[John H. <jd...@gm...>]

It is a great honor for me to announce that Michael Droettboom has
agreed to take on the role of lead developer of matplotlib.  Since
Michael joined the project in 2007, he has been responsible for much
of the code that brought matplotlib from being an excellent tool to a
world class one.  No one in the world understands the code from the
inside out like he does, and many of his contributions, while often
unseen at the surface, have laid the foundation for matplotlib to
reach further into the wild and wonderful things it can now do.

To name a few of his contributions: generic, optimized caching
transformations; dramatic backend simplification and rationalization;
countless optimizations; implementation of Knuth mathtex layouts;
python3 support, and dolphins!  I like to tell people Michael codes
with the force of ten men, and he's an incredible asset to our team.

My role has been significantly diminished of late -- although I have
been the nominal lead developer, in practice I have been a release
manager.  Unfortunately, I need to take some time to focus on family
health issues, but will continue to follow development and make
contributions as I can.  We'll be looking for a release manager soon,
and if you are interested in stepping up, we'll welcome the effort.
We have a wonderful distributed development team using github pull
requests, and the line between core developers, project leaders and
plain-ole contributers is blurry.  But I think it helps to have
someone thinking about the project as a whole, who is willing and able
to make decisions when necessary, and no one is better suited to doing
this than Michael.

I also extend my heartfelt thanks to Perry Greenfield and STScI.  They
have been supporting matplotlib since 2004 with ideas, code and
developer resources.  They employ Michael currently, and are part of
the reason why he is able to take on the leadership of this large
project.

Michael, many thanks.