They don't seek the limelight, and yet, without them, Joomla 5.4 wouldn't be what it is. Richard Fath and Heiko Lübbe embody this new team of discreet but formidably efficient Release Managers, behind this bridge release to Joomla 6. Who are they?

Two long-time enthusiasts with solid technical backgrounds, united by the same desire: to contribute actively to an open source project they deeply value. 

In this joint interview, they look back at how they met, their role in the release process, the challenges of version 5.4, and share with us, without embellishment, what drives them on a daily basis.
An authentic behind-the-scenes look at Joomla development, through the eyes of two committed, generous... and modest contributors.

Could you please introduce yourselves? Who are you, what is your background, where do you live?

Heiko:I am a 63-year-old German, with two grown-up sons and two granddaughters. I was born in Berlin and live now in Ketzin/Havel, close to Berlin. My first life was as an electronics technician and telecommunications engineer. But after graduating, I started with Unix administration and C programming in 1986. I worked the last 30 years as an IT freelance, last years as IT project manager. 

Richard: I’m 57 years old, single, have no children, and have always lived in the same place in a village close to Heidelberg, Germany.
After an odyssey through second-chance education in Electrical Power Engineering, I ended up in 1998 in the power system control industry, where I worked as a software developer for 17 years.
Some 10 years ago I changed to another company in the same business and am doing hotline remote support.

We’d like to know a little bit more about your life outside Joomla: can you share one hobby or interest that's totally unrelated to Joomla or websites?

Richard: Well, there is not really a hobby outside Joomla, because Joomla has become my main hobby. Besides that I am interested in music, politics, history, such stuff.

Heiko: I finished my last marathon in 2014, but I still regularly run a few kilometres once a week.

Can you tell us how you first came across Joomla? 

Richard: That was in 2011.

I wanted to share old recordings from my former punk and blues rock bands with old friends.
But at the time, it was nearly impossible to upload and publish MP3 files anywhere on the web.
Whether it was my internet provider's web space, YouTube, or whatever, I'd get notices saying the file type wasn't supported due to possible copyright infringement.
So I decided to create my own website for that purpose.
After a few unsatisfying experiments with some homepage builders I thought: let's see how the professionals do it.

I had a look into Joomla and Drupal, which both were very popular at that time.
In the end I decided to go with Joomla, last but not least because I was fascinated by the idea of a community driven open source project without any commercial interests in the background.

So I've started with Joomla 1.5.

Heiko: I used Joomla for the website of my consulting business.  I can't remember exactly when I started using Joomla. The oldest Joomla page I found in the web archive is from December 2008.

Can you tell us how you two first met in the Joomla universe? (that is when you both met)

Richard: We haven’t met in person yet. I remember having seen some pull requests from Heiko on GitHub for our automated system tests last year, and these pull requests were well done, with good descriptions and testing instructions and good code quality. Since we have decided to become release managers for 5.4, we regularly meet on Google meet and communicate on Mattermost.

Heiko: Yes, we haven’t met in person yet and I’m looking forward to seeing Richard at JoomlaDay D-A-CH in November. With the PRs implementing feature request 43902 to support non-standard database ports last year, Richard was a great help and support for me. He always took the time to support me.

Why did you decide to become a release manager?

Richard: As an experienced contributor to and maintainer of the CMS code I know that I have the necessary technical skill set, especially when it comes to database knowledge or anything related to the update process.

But as I am not a website builder or extension developer and in my daily job never was a manager, I think I lack some management skills and some knowledge about what product features Joomla needs, and so I did not step up for that job in the past.

However, when Benjamin Trenkle asked me for 5.4 and told me that Heiko could be my possible companion, I thought that could be a good fit, my technical focus and skill set and his experience in management and the good impression I had from his pull requests.

And as the focus of 5.4 is not on many fancy new features but on stability and a smooth update to 6, I thought “Yes, this could work” and finally said yes.

Another aspect was to see how hard it was to find 2 release managers for each minor version in the past, and that for 5.3 nobody was found, so I thought I cannot always say “no” when I have the technical skill set just because I'm a lazy ass sometimes.

Heiko: Sigrid Gramlinger asked: ‘Who can support the project as a release manager? At the same time, she assured that anyone could do it. Then I thought: why not? Sigrid and Benjamin spoke to me first. They suggested that I become Release Manager for 5.4 together with Richard.  And I felt very comfortable working with Richard as he is a very experienced Joomler. I think this is a good way to combine an experienced person with a new one. And so far it's going really well. Richard patiently explains to me what needs to be done. Thank you Richard.

You are both members of the community. Not every Joomla user chooses to give back to the community; what made you decide to make that journey from user to community member? 

Richard: It was a slow continuous process. After having used Joomla for a while for my website, I’ve noticed a small bug and reported it. Contributors encouraged me to provide a pull request with a fix, so I’ve made my first small fix in 2014.

I liked the idea of a community driven free open source project where I can contribute to make it better, and I thought I should give something back because I am using it for free.

After that my involvement continuously grew, and after I had changed my job from a software developer to hotline support it became my hobby, as it allows me to continue with what I have done before in my old job, software development and maintenance.

Heiko: I'm really thankful that I can use Wikipedia or Let's Encrypt.  And also for all the open source projects like BSD Unix or Gimp. Now I have the time and can give something back. Specifically, I started by creating automated Cypress tests for my Joomla quote service module zitat-service using the joomla-cypress NPM package. I found a few problems and fixed them and, following Harald Leithner's advice, created my first PRs even before I became a Joomler.

Do you use Joomla 5 in your daily life? And if yes, then what do you like most over Joomla 3 and 4?

Richard: As I only run my own website with Joomla, I do not really “use” Joomla in my daily life.

But of course I install, update, test diverse Joomla versions often on different environments as part of my activities as contributor, maintainer and member of the Security Strike Team (SST). So I’m familiar with the functionality and the history from Joomla 3 to 5 (and soon 6).

When we came up with Joomla 4, many users complained about the changes in the backend, but exactly those were what I liked most about Joomla 4 compared with 3.

To me it made more sense to have the administration of content and the system administration at different places, the admin menu and the system panel, and not all in one cluttered menu like it was in Joomla 3. Also the grouping in the system panel of Joomla 4 seems to be more logical to me than the admin menu structure in Joomla 3.

What I like most about Joomla 5 is that it keeps that structure from Joomla 4.

Another thing I like much about Joomla 5 is also something which many users complained about: The increased minimum version requirements for PHP and databases.

This allows us to use modern and clean PHP code and better SQL e.g. by using JSON functions instead of dangerous string replacements in our update SQL scripts.

Heiko: I only run two small Joomla websites. There is no need for daily activities.

What are the things in Joomla 5.3 you’re really happy with?

Richard: Nothing really special. I see a continuous improvement of code quality from Joomla 3 to 4 to 5 with each minor version, and so to me 5.3 is the best we have - until we come up with 5.4 🙂.

Heiko: I also work in the Automated Testing Team (ATT) and I am pleased that we have further developed and stabilised the automated tests.

What are your plans for Joomla 5.4?

Heiko: Version 5.4 should ensure a smooth transition to the next major version 6.0. And the automatic update with „The Update Framework“ (TUF) is a great and urgently needed feature.

Richard: As Heiko said. 5.4 is the so-called “bridge version” to 6.x like 4.4 was to 5.x, so we focus on stability and reliability. That’s why we have chosen the code name “Kutegemea”, which is Swahili language and stands for something you can rely on or depend on.

Is there anything you want to change or introduce, anything you think we could do better as we go through the process of making a new minor version?

Heiko: A few weeks ago, I started working as a release manager. On the one hand, the work requires many steps in the right order and on the other hand, it's like a recipe if you do it several times. There is already a lot of internal documentation for Release Managers and I think I can improve or extend it a bit for the next Release Managers.

Richard: I’m an experienced CMS maintainer, but the release process internals are new to me, too. So I will know what could be done better when I’ve gone through that process.

What are you most looking forward to?

Heiko: Sign our self-built Joomla release with our new The Update Framework (TUF) ourselves.

Richard: I’m looking forward to the day when Joomla 5.4 has reached the end of support and we have done a good job.

How can we all help to make the release process smoother?

Richard: You all can help by testing alpha, beta and release candidate pre-releases. The earlier bugs are reported, the earlier they can be fixed, and having less time pressure makes things smoother. And when you report bugs or provide pull requests with bug fixes, don’t just fire and forget. Keep subscribed on your issue or pull request so you get notified when we have comments, questions or change suggestions, and be responsive in such a case. 

Heiko: I can only agree with Richard and thank you in advance for testing Joomla 5.4.