Chris Wiegman
I’ve had a desire to maintain an open-source project again for a very long time. Since the days of Better WP Security and Better Google Tasks I’ve wanted to build something that someone other than me would find interesting and useful as well as I’ve wanted to just have fun building something again.
I’ve come close a few times, both personally with Primary Vagrant and professionally with DevKit and other projects but it was never the same. Especially with DevKit, while I really did enjoy my time on the project the profit motivation, even on a free product, was never ideal to me.
I often think my perfect life would be the ability to simply work on projects like Kana during the day while not having to worry about all those pesky life problems like paying for food and housing and everything else that comes with it. That would be ideal but, I’m not rich and I’m not about to inherit homes or anything to make that happen so a balance must be struck.
To be clear, I do enjoy my day job. I get to work with a great team as we build out a framework that I really do believe will enable so much for headless WordPress. I love to work with the people, the process and WordPress in general to build something people will use but it’s not perfect.
Kana will never pay my bills but it will also never demand I spend 40+ hours each week laboring away on it either. It is my escape both as a hobby and from work and project like WordPress (yes, it’s still a WordPress project but it’s written in GoLang and, for once, I’m not working directly in WordPress code).
Instead Kana, and a few other projects I have in my head, are something I’m building simply because I love to build. I never learned how to do construction or remodeling as a kid and as an adult I’ve mostly never cared to start but, I do love to create, even if it isn’t physical objects. That’s what Kana gives me, the chance to create, and I can’t wait to do more with it.