Jonathan Desrosiers

Today officially marks 2 full years since my first commit to the WordPress open source project. 🎉

In the context of the WordPress project, a committer is a contributor with the ability to modify the main WordPress repository. Since 2004, roughly 90 people have been granted commit status for WordPress Core. If you’re interested in learning more, I recommend reading The Qualities of a great WordPress contributor by WordPress Lead Developer Andrew Nacin. Though this post was written in 2014 (and his blog has likely not been updated much since then), a lot of the responsibilities and duties of a committer still hold true.

By the numbers

Because looking at data is fun, I pulled some stats from the commit logs to see what I could learn. In two years, I have made:

• 790 total commits
• 437 commits to trunk
• 128 version bumps
• 82 version tags created.
• 1 version branch created
• 10 reverts
• 6 partial reverts
• 5 “unprops”
• 1 “unrops”
• 1 embarrassing keyboard mistake

Roughly grouped, here are commits by component (* designates a component I help maintain):

• Build/Test Tools: 82*
• Bundled Themes: 75
• General: 71*
• Docs: 43
• Editor/block editor: 38
• Help/About: 32
• Site Health: 27
• Administration: 24
• Privacy: 20
• Upgrade/Install: 17
• REST API: 13
• Coding standards: 16
• External Libraries: 16*
• Tests: 13
• Media: 12*
• Script Loader: 8
• Customize: 6
• Embeds: 6
• i18n/l10n: 6
• Menus: 6
• Networks and Sites: 5
• Themes: 5
• Widgets: 5
• Accessibility: 4
• Bootstrap/Load: 4
• Emoji: 4*
• XML-RPC: 3
• Date/Time: 2
• Feeds: 2
• Formatting: 2
• Meta: 2
• Plugins: 2
• Comments: 1
• Database: 1
• Login/Registration: 1
• Query: 1

While the numbers above are interesting, by far my favorite stat of all is 341: the number of unique contributors receiving “props” in commit messages that I have written.

Committers giving “props” to contributors on each changeset is how the project tracks who contributes to each version of WordPress. Props are compiled before a new version is released, and every contributor is credited on the About page.

This stat in particular makes me happy because I remember the excitement and satisfaction that I felt when I first contributed to WordPress (and still feel to this day). I hope that handing out props to contributors in my commit messages gives them that same feeling.

Being paid to work on open source software (OSS) full-time, and being a WordPress Core committer is a privilege that I don’t take lightly. Facilitating contributions and recognizing contributors for their hard work and passion to make 38% of the web a better place is truly humbling. Any commit I make is merely recognition of the passion within others.

So thank you all for your contributions! Here’s to many more years. 🍻

PS: If you have never received props for contributing to WordPress, I’d love to give you props in a future commit.

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