[midPoint] My engagement in midPoint development

[Radovan Semancik]

Dear midPoint community,


MidPoint project started eight years ago. The first code of midPoint 
project was committed in May 2011. MidPoint team started small, but we 
were working hard all the time. Now, eight years later, we have a very 
unique product. MidPoint is an open source system for identity 
management, governance, there are compliance and data protection 
features and we have quite ambitious plans for the future. Evolveum is 
still relatively small, but stable company. The business is going well 
and 2018 was the best year in Evolveum history.

First of all I would like to thank you all. Even though majority of 
midPoint code is developed by the Evolveum team, midPoint is a result of 
cooperation of the entire midPoint community. MidPoint wouldn't be what 
it is without you. Your code contributions, ideas, feedback, 
translation, testing effort and all other kinds of contributions are 
crucial for success of midPoint. Thank you!

We are all very happy how successful midPoint is. However, this success 
is based on a hard and persistent work. This work is not always just 
about the technology. There is a significant effort that Evolveum has to 
invest in non-technological tasks, such as planning, work coordination, 
communication with customers and even ordinary routine tasks of running 
a business. Evolveum grows every year, both in terms of amount of 
business and the number of employees.

Since the beginning of Evolveum I was in charge of midPoint development 
in a role of software architect. I was enjoying that job immensely - and 
I still am. I'm completely dedicated to software engineering. However, 
as Evolveum founder and co-owner, I have to assume responsibilities for 
the entire company, not just the development of midPoint. I will have to 
dedicate much more time to leadership of the company. I'm quite sure 
some of you have noticed that I'm less active in day-to-day midPoint 
development. The reason for this is that my leadership-related tasks are 
taking more and more time. Therefore I have to re-prioritize my work. I 
will keep an oversight of midPoint architecture and development. 
However, my time as a hands-on midPoint developer will be very limited.

I would like to use this opportunity to also announce some changes in 
midPoint development team. Two members of the development team are 
"promoted" to be in charge of midPoint architecture and development: 
Katka Valalikova and Pavol Mederly. Both of them will take significant 
part of my responsibilities. Katka will focus on the management and 
organizational part of the development, while Pavol will focus on 
software architecture of midPoint. But both of them are equal in their 
responsibilities. Both of them are crucial part of the development team 
from the early days. And I have no doubts that they will excel in their 
new role in the development team. Also, we will be gradually expanding 
the team with new developers to maintain our development capacity.

This is both an exciting and a little sad moment for me. It is exciting 
because midPoint is great, Evolveum is successful and I see that my 
closer involvement in company leadership is the right thing to do. 
However, it is also a sad moment. I love software development. But a 
very little time will remain for me to get my hands dirty. Nevertheless, 
my choices are quite clear. I have to do what needs to be done. For the 
best of us all.


-- 
Radovan Semancik
Software Architect
evolveum.com