ANN: Michael Droettboom, matplotlib lead developer

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.