While researching some information, I came across an article by Freemius that reminded me of Tevya Washburn who passed away last year. Tevya was the developer behind the Starfish Reviews plugin and was part of the web development company wpEXPRESS. Tevya was also part of the Freemius community and used its services to enhance his plugin business. His death struck the Freemius community off guard and up until that point, Freemius had no way for business owners to hand over the reins to a successor.
Freemius now has the ability for users to assign someone as the successor to their account in case they’re unable to operate it themselves. Note that the successor must already have an account with Freemius to qualify.
This made me wonder how many other WordPress-centric services that play an integral part in someone’s business have something in place to transfer ownership to a successor?
I imagine something like that would make it a lot easier for family or co-owners of the business to seamlessly take control and maintain the business or at least that relationship. If you’ve seen this option available in other places, let me know in the comments.
In addition to adding the successor feature, Freemius created a GoFundMe account for Tevya’s family that raised nearly $50K. This was an awesome gesture on the part of Freemius.
I want to pass along my condolences to Tevya’s friends and family. He and I conducted some private conversations on Twitter early in 2020 and he was a big fan and supporter of WP Mainline.
We’ll miss you Tevya but you’re memory lives on. Thank you for all of your contributions to WordPress and may you rest in peace. Choo Choo brother.