Like most Emacs users, I depend on Melpa to install my packages and keep them up to date. I have a couple of packages from the other repositories but the majority of them come from Melpa. It’s easy to get grumpy when something goes wrong: there’s a build error, there’s a missing file, a package takes a while to get into Melpa, and so on.
The truth though, is that Melpa is a volunteer operation run by Steve Purcell. Everything that happens on Melpa happens because Purcell or one of his helpers spent their time doing it for free. I was reminded of that by this thread on Twitter:
Thanks for all your hard work and in particular your choice to spend your own time on this. You are a real credit to the #emacs community and it would be significantly poorer without your constant gardening. I hope you get the chance to enjoy a well earned break.
— Alex Murray (@alex_murray) December 23, 2017
If you click on the tweet, you’ll see that it started with Purcell saying he was 18 days behind in dealing with pull requests. To deal with that, Purcell spent 3 and a half hours on a holiday weekend to clear the backlog. As Murray says, we all owe Purcell thanks for a job well done and for donating his time for this unpaid but very important work.
Purcell lives in New Zealand so most of us are unlikely to run into him but if you do, be sure to give him your thanks and buy him a beer. It’s the least we can do.