What future for Curator?

[mikewillis]

The most recent release notes for Curator contain this:

No, Curator isn't going away. But as you can tell, it's not as actively
developed as it once was. I am gratified to find there are still users who
make it a part of their workflow. I intend to continue development in my
spare time. Curator is now a labor of love, not an engineering project I
do during work hours.

In light of this, what is the official position of Elastic regarding Curator's future?

If it's no longer being developed during "work hours" then that suggests that as far as Elastic is concerned Curator is dead. Which would be a shame given Index Lifecycle Management doesn't provide equivalent functionality.

[theuntergeek (Aaron Mildenstein)]

Elastic has never had an official stance or position regarding Curator. It has always been maintained by me, and those in the community who have contributed. In the past, before ILM existed, and when I my role at Elastic was developer, I got to write code "on the clock," when I wasn't completely busy with Logstash. Then my role changed when I joined the Professional Services team. I was helping companies nearly all day, every day. When I was traveling, I sometimes worked on Curator in the evenings, from my hotel room. As my work load increased, my need for downtime increased, and my work on Curator followed.

I now have another new role at Elastic, and as the psychological impact of 2020 and COVID-19 are diminishing, and I have more time and desire in the evenings, I will continue my work on Curator. This is all that the statement in the release means. Curator was never able to be on the same release schedule as the rest of the Elastic Stack because it was only ever me working on it when I had time. It's still that way now. I actually hope to increase my time on it, but this will depend on many factors. I do not like making promises I cannot guarantee, so I left it rather open in my statement. I spent several days over the Christmas holiday this year (my own time) working on a better package building system based on Docker. This was serious tech debt that needed addressing to increase the pace of builds. With that done, subsequent builds will be less daunting.

In conclusion, I'm sorry to have disappointed the community. Curator has always been a passion project for me, and I had to take time to take care of me for a while. I hope to get back to increased development and more frequent releases, but it will depend on a lot of things I have little control over. That still doesn't mean Curator will go away, or be abandoned.