For the next few months, Lasse and Jia quietly continued work on XZ Utils. The crown jewel of the next release - parallel decompression - was polished and tested to perfection. Dennis, the Java developer, had drifted away, leaving the project free of drama again.

Lasse admired the state of the project. It was finally back on track and making steady progress. He admired Jia too. What better help could a maintainer want?

The question of Jia’s promotion to maintainer stayed at the forefront of Lasse’s mind. He had been intending to get round to it for some time, and in late October he finally decided to pull the trigger. After almost a year of collaboration with Jia, he officially invited Jia to become a maintainer of the Tukaani Project. He gladly accepted the offer and thanked Lasse for the past year of work together. It was just the two of them in Tukaani now - everyone else from the project’s early days left long ago.

Alongside the promotion, Jia suggested they modify the project’s bug report email. At the time, it had been sending all emails just to Lasse. Jia asked if the emails could be forwarded to them both, and Lasse agreed. He was at his computer infrequently, so it made perfect sense for somebody a bit more punctual to receive the emails too. The bug report email was changed to xz@tukaani.org, an address they both had access to.

Becoming a maintainer gave Jia the ability to alter XZ Utils’ code without having to ask Lasse first. As a result, development quickened drastically. Although they each worked across the whole project, they specialised in specific areas: Lasse focused on compression and decompression, whereas Jia revamped the automated testing.

2023 rolled around and there were no significant features planned, so Lasse and Jia completed project chores. They improved documentation, fixed a smattering of warnings, and streamlined the compilation.

Lasse was very pleased with the software’s state. Through his and Jia’s hard work, there were no major issues left unresolved. He watched Jia grow accustomed to the code, and he could tell XZ Utils was now in safe hands. The next version - 5.4.1 - was ready for release. He figured this version should be his last, and future releases would be Jia’s responsibility. Lasse created and published the new version online. Jia subsequently announced the new release and explained all the new features. Lasse was impressed by his style - the version announcement mirrored his past announcements well.

As winter continued, development was uneventful. Lasse and Jia fixed a handful of bugs in XZ Utils and published version 5.4.2. Jia’s promotion to the second maintainer had been a major success.