What's Next

[paltman]

Per #644 and #594, I'm taking this library to a newer, lighter, more easily maintained app that provides webhook support for Stripe integrations.

Over the years, I have used Stripe quite a bit for integrations involving lot of transactions, some direct SaaS apps, some marketplaces uses Stripe Connect with connected accounts in most countries around the world.

The only thing I use this package for is the webhook integration. Using the stripe library and building things directly in each app as I need to support different features and rarely find the need for the cached data. Combine this with how often Stripe releases new API changes and it results in a library that gets outdated fast with just a single maintainer (me). Open source tends to only get maintained by maintainers that either use the software themselves or are maintaining as part of their jobs.

With this in mind, I've decided to create a new package, pinax-stripe-light that will exist on the mainline and will continue to be supported by the Pinax team. I have taken a pass through open PRs and merged what I could to a long-lived branched called original. I have also taken a pass on that branch and updated to latest Python and Django matrix including an update to CI. Lastly, I have labeled all open PRs (and switched their base) that applies to the "Original" vision for pinax-stripe. I will not be able to maintain or cut releases on this line anymore, however.

If anyone is interesting in taking over this original branch and making their own repo/package, I will do everything I can to support that effort and help you transition. If you want to retain the pinax-stripe branding and name, we can add you to the Pinax org, create a new repo with that name (I'm going to rename this repo to pinax-stripe-light), and get you setup on PyPI as the package maintainer. Of course, if you'd like to undertake a rebrand/rename at your own location, I'm happy to support this as well including pointers in this repo to it's new home.

Finally, there is always the option to hop over to dj-stripe. dj-stripe was originally hard forked by Danny Greenfeld from the genesis of this project for reasons that still escape me. Perhaps he didn't like what we were doing here but I'm not sure as there were not any pull requests or issues filed by him that I recall. In the years, since this hard fork, it has been taken over by new maintainers who seems to have quite a bit of commercial support funding its development. Between the maintainers consulting on Stripe integrations and project sponsorships that I estimate to be about $70k a year, I imagine this to be a really well maintained option and it would be hard to argue against moving over to it if you were starting something new today and needed more than simple webhook integration.

All this said, I'm starting this thread to announce my intentions and plans and to serve as a call for maintainers for original.

I'm in no rush to delete the original branch and want to limit impact on anyone who are dependant on an existing version of pinax-stripe. I recognize this might be a controversial move for all the folks using this package. Given that it's been literally years since a release, I imagine most have given up on it, though.

Thanks to @lukeburden @blueyed @ticosax and the rest of the over 60 contributors to this project.