As the Software Wars indiegogo campaign comes to a close in the last 40 hours, did you know Python plays a role in the movie? Creator Keith Curtis wrote to us to mention that William Stein, creator of Sage, is interviewed and endorses Python's use for teaching mathematics to children. There are also plans to interview others in the community, perhaps some of the children making use of Python.
The creators greatly appreciate your contributions to make Software Wars possible!
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Monday, January 07, 2013
wiki.python.org Compromised
On December 28th, an unknown attacker used a previously unknown remote code exploit on http://wiki.python.org/. The attacker was able to get shell access as the "moin" user, but no other services were affected.
Some time later, the attacker deleted all files owned by the "moin" user, including all instance data for both the Python and Jython wikis. The attack also had full access to all MoinMoin user data on all wikis. In light of this, the Python Software Foundation encourages all wiki users to change their password on other sites if the same one is in use elsewhere. We apologize for the inconvenience and will post further news as we bring the new and improved wiki.python.org online.
If you have any questions about this incident please contact jnoller@python.org. Thank you for your patience.
Some time later, the attacker deleted all files owned by the "moin" user, including all instance data for both the Python and Jython wikis. The attack also had full access to all MoinMoin user data on all wikis. In light of this, the Python Software Foundation encourages all wiki users to change their password on other sites if the same one is in use elsewhere. We apologize for the inconvenience and will post further news as we bring the new and improved wiki.python.org online.
If you have any questions about this incident please contact jnoller@python.org. Thank you for your patience.
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
A Look Back at the PSF in 2012
2012 year was a good year for Python, and it was especially good for the Python Software Foundation. Here’s a look back at some of the highlights of the foundation’s actions in 2012. As always, you can find out about the resolutions that the board has passed at http://www.python.org/psf/records/board/resolutions/ and each meeting of the board of directors has minutes posted at http://www.python.org/psf/records/board/minutes/.
Overall, it was a great year, and we’re looking forward to an even better 2013. You can make it even better by making a contribution to the foundation at http://www.python.org/psf/donations/!
Conference Sponsorship
The foundation sponsored 18 conferences in 15 countries for a total of USD $32,661.53. Among those funded were a group of established conferences, and something we’re always happy to find out about: new conferences. The inaugural PyCarolinas, and PyCons in South Africa, Philippines, and Canada were newcomers to the conference scene, along with RuPy Brazil starting a new branch of the RuPy brand.
The following conferences were granted funding in the 2012 calendar year:
- PyCon Australia
- Kiwi PyCon
- PyArgentina
- EuroPython
- PythonBrazil
- PyOhio
- SciPy
- PyCon DE
- PyCon UK
- PyCon India
- PyCon Philippines
- PyCon PL
- PyCon ZA
- PyArkansas
- PyCon Canada
- PyData
- RuPy Brno
- RyPy Brazil
Code of Conduct
In keeping up with the current conference scene, the foundation moved to suggest that all conferences implement a Code of Conduct for their events. Many conferences have done so on their own, and the foundation agreed that it’s a good thing for all conferences to have in place.
A second resolution was passed, making it a requirement that PSF-funded conferences have a Code of Conduct in place. The foundation wants to support conferences that support their attendees, so the move was a natural fit.
Community Service Awards
Each quarter, the foundation selects one or two community members to be presented with a Community Service Award. The award aims to reward those who have made substantial contributions to the Python community, with the recipient receiving a certificate and either a free pass to PyCon or USD $500.
This year’s winners were:
Q2: Doug Hellmann and Thomas Heller
Distinguished Service Award
Matplotlib’s creator and longtime maintainer, John Hunter, passed away in August of 2012 after a brief battle with cancer. John’s contributions not only to Python but to computing, mathematics, and science, have changed the way people do things. His matplotlib project has existed for over 10 years, initiated during his post-doctoral studies while looking for alternatives to proprietary products in the same field, and his dedication to free software never faded throughout his leadership of the project. His efforts also extended into the recently created NumFOCUS Foundation, of which he was a member of the board.
When John passed away, the foundation wanted to do something for John’s significant achievements, thus the creation of the Distinguished Service Award and the choosing of him as the first recipient. The award is to be presented annually to a member of the community who has exhibited long lasting contributions of high impact, coming with a prize of USD $5,000.
The award was presented to John’s family at a memorial service at his alma mater, University of Chicago.
Frank Willison Memorial Award
Each year the foundation recommends the recipient of the annual Frank Willison Memorial Award, an award delivered in conjunction with O’Reilly Media to commemorate O’Reilly’s long time editor-in-chief and Python fan, Frank Willison, who passed away in 2001.
The 2012 recipient of the award was Jesse Noller, whose outstanding efforts have reached many areas of the Python community. Jesse began as a CPython contributor and has since gotten involved in PyCon, acting as the Program Committee chair in 2010 and 2011, and the conference chair in 2012 and 2013. His leadership of the 2012 conference lead to the breaking of just about every record, from sponsorship counts to talk proposals received, on up through attendance and into revenues. However, Jesse’s efforts extend far beyond CPython and PyCon, into the creation of many efforts around the Python community.
Hardware
One of the first actions of the year was approval for hardware purchases to replace an aging python.org infrastructure, thanks to a donation by Atlassian. Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab offered their services for hosting the new hardware, and for their services and commitment to open source, a donation of $3000 was made to them.
A few months later, the purchase of a long-term storage array was approved for use by the PSF and the Django Software Foundation, to be maintained by long-time PyCon video coordinator, Carl Karsten. Carl stores several terabytes of conference video from events such as PyCon, PyOhio, PyTexas, and other events.
Sponsor Members
While the foundation is made up mostly of individual members, sponsor members are a class of membership for organizations who make a yearly contribution to the foundation. Like any other members, sponsor members are put before the current membership for election, after being recommended to the membership by the board of directors.
2012 saw four organizations recommended and then approved by the membership:
Event Coordinator and Secretary
As the conference landscape has grown, not just with PyCon, the foundation’s largest event, but with events around the globe, the need arose for a dedicated employee to organize and work with the existing volunteers. Ewa Jodlowska, who formerly worked with a conference organization company, was hired to manage the logistics of a conference the size of PyCon and to assist the chairman in ensuring a successful and smooth event.
After a few months in this position, Ewa expanded her role to include secretarial duties for the foundation.
Conference Kits
As the foundation found itself sponsoring plenty of conferences this year, many which include booth space in an expo hall, several “conference kits” were purchased that could be sent around the world and used by members at the conference to represent the foundation. So far the kits have made their way to a few conferences since their purchase. If you see one at a conference near you, stop by and say hello!
http://i.imgur.com/ndVhW.jpg
Funding
The foundation has long held an open call for grant requests, and this year three were approved.
In April, the board approved a USD $5,000 request from Armin Rigo of the PyPy team for work on their Software Transactional Memory project. October saw the passing of a USD $5,000 grant to the developers of Kivy, a multi-touch framework, to assist in their efforts to port the project to Python 3. Also on the topic of Python 3 porting was a USD $1,000 grant for Mikhail Korobov to work with NLTK maintainer Steven Bird to complete their port of the library.
Raspberry Pi
In April a resolution was passed that the foundation would purchase 50 Raspberry Pi devices, to use as raffle prizes, to give to interested projects, and for other uses to allow the device to see wider use in the hands of Python users. Several have been given away, including most recently that one will be added to the Snakebite testing environment, which will then be added to CPython’s buildbot fleet.
New Website
After a request for proposal period over the summer, a redesign committee deliberated over the selections and suggested to the foundation’s board a combination bid between Revolution Systems, Project Evolution, and Divio to design and implement a new python.org. Work is currently underway, and Jesse Noller wrote about the project’s progress on November 28.
The redesign project was a long time in the making, and the RFP process went smoothly. The progress we’re seeing so far has been excellent and we’re looking forward to presenting the finished project.
Overall, it was a great year, and we’re looking forward to an even better 2013. You can make it even better by making a contribution to the foundation at http://www.python.org/psf/donations/!
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Antoine Pitrou chosen for Q4 Community Service Award
On December 19, the Python Software Foundation’s board voted to present Antoine Pitrou with a Community Service Award for the fourth quarter of 2012.
Antoine has been a prolific CPython contributor throughout his more than five years of work, with his efforts reaching many areas of the code. His improvements to CPython’s global interpreter lock, or GIL, in the fall of 2009 caught a lot of attention around the web. He was also a major contributor to Python 3’s I/O system for the 3.0 release, and his recent work on PEP 3151 to rework the OS and IO exception hierarchy was shipped in the 3.3 release.
His activity extends throughout the codebase and development process, where he’s active in bug triage and spends time in IRC. On top of the over 3000 commits made by Antoine since gaining access in June 2008, making him the seventh most active committer, he has been involved in several parts of the python.org infrastructure, including CPython’s buildbot system.
The Python Software Foundation and Python community thanks Antoine for his consistent efforts and excellent contributions!
Antoine has been a prolific CPython contributor throughout his more than five years of work, with his efforts reaching many areas of the code. His improvements to CPython’s global interpreter lock, or GIL, in the fall of 2009 caught a lot of attention around the web. He was also a major contributor to Python 3’s I/O system for the 3.0 release, and his recent work on PEP 3151 to rework the OS and IO exception hierarchy was shipped in the 3.3 release.
His activity extends throughout the codebase and development process, where he’s active in bug triage and spends time in IRC. On top of the over 3000 commits made by Antoine since gaining access in June 2008, making him the seventh most active committer, he has been involved in several parts of the python.org infrastructure, including CPython’s buildbot system.
The Python Software Foundation and Python community thanks Antoine for his consistent efforts and excellent contributions!
Stefan Krah chosen for Q4 Community Service Award
On December 19, the Python Software Foundation’s board voted to present Stefan Krah with a Community Service Award for the fourth quarter of 2012.
Stefan has been a CPython committer since April 2010 when his work on a C version of the decimal module was tracked in a Subversion branch tied to issue #7652, though his work began far before that. Stefah created the mpdecimal C library, an implementation of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification, as a multi-platform project providing “correctly-rounded arbitrary precision decimal floating point arithmetic.” The cdecimal module utilizes mpdecimal to provide a much more performant decimal library for Python.
The code was checked in early this year in changeset 7355550d5357, in time for the release of CPython 3.3. As the What’s New in Python 3.3 document shows, cdecimal has proven to be significantly faster with speedups as high as 120x on a pi calculation benchmark. The mpdecimal quickstart page shows how to execute the code yourself, and even the telecom and database tests show speedups of 30x and 12x, respectively.
Stefan has also contributed to several other areas of the codebase, including work on PEP 3118 for Python 3.3. He also contributes changes to platforms such as HP-UX and AIX.
The Python Software Foundation and Python community thanks Stefan for his consistent efforts and excellent contributions!
Stefan has been a CPython committer since April 2010 when his work on a C version of the decimal module was tracked in a Subversion branch tied to issue #7652, though his work began far before that. Stefah created the mpdecimal C library, an implementation of the General Decimal Arithmetic Specification, as a multi-platform project providing “correctly-rounded arbitrary precision decimal floating point arithmetic.” The cdecimal module utilizes mpdecimal to provide a much more performant decimal library for Python.
The code was checked in early this year in changeset 7355550d5357, in time for the release of CPython 3.3. As the What’s New in Python 3.3 document shows, cdecimal has proven to be significantly faster with speedups as high as 120x on a pi calculation benchmark. The mpdecimal quickstart page shows how to execute the code yourself, and even the telecom and database tests show speedups of 30x and 12x, respectively.
Stefan has also contributed to several other areas of the codebase, including work on PEP 3118 for Python 3.3. He also contributes changes to platforms such as HP-UX and AIX.
The Python Software Foundation and Python community thanks Stefan for his consistent efforts and excellent contributions!
Thursday, December 06, 2012
PSF Moves to Require Code of Conduct for Conference Grants
On Wednesday, November 21, the Python Software Foundation’s board of directors voted on two resolutions on the topic of Codes of Conduct at Python conferences. As the Python conference landscape grows to include more events and attract more attendees, the Foundation looks to ensure that conferences, new and old, are being run in a way that is enjoyable for all.
The first resolution passed by the board serves as the Foundation’s recommendation that all Python conferences and related events create and apply a Code of Conduct. The board unanimously agreed on this point, suggesting that publicly documented expectations and plans of action are necessary when planning and running an event in our community.
The second resolution passed by the board serves as the Foundation’s requirement that all Python conferences and related events create and apply a Code of Conduct. Without a code in place, the Foundation will not fund the event.
PyCon US, the largest of the Python conferences, first implemented a Code of Conduct for the March 2012 conference. For PyCon 2013, the code was left the same, but comes with the addition of documented incident handling guidelines. Many conferences followed suit to add a code, such as PyOhio, pyArkansas, PyTexas, PyCon Canada, and others.
PyCon’s Code of Conduct is structured after one created by The Ada Initiative and others, available under the Creative Commons Zero license at http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy.
The first resolution passed by the board serves as the Foundation’s recommendation that all Python conferences and related events create and apply a Code of Conduct. The board unanimously agreed on this point, suggesting that publicly documented expectations and plans of action are necessary when planning and running an event in our community.
The second resolution passed by the board serves as the Foundation’s requirement that all Python conferences and related events create and apply a Code of Conduct. Without a code in place, the Foundation will not fund the event.
PyCon US, the largest of the Python conferences, first implemented a Code of Conduct for the March 2012 conference. For PyCon 2013, the code was left the same, but comes with the addition of documented incident handling guidelines. Many conferences followed suit to add a code, such as PyOhio, pyArkansas, PyTexas, PyCon Canada, and others.
PyCon’s Code of Conduct is structured after one created by The Ada Initiative and others, available under the Creative Commons Zero license at http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
python.org is getting a makeover!
It is with great pride that on behalf of the Python Software Foundation and the community as a whole, I am pleased to announce that the official Python.org website, sub-sites, and back-end architecture are getting a total makeover.
Introduction
Python has grown significantly in the last few years, both in terms of audience and the amount of topical information about it. This abundance of information has outgrown the current website’s taxonomy and fundamental design.
The key goal of the redesign project is to update Python’s official web presence with an eye towards better organizing the information we have today, and expect to add in the future.
The end result aims to help our audience find the information they need whether it’s official information like downloads and documentation, or resources from our vibrant community.
Although the current implementation of the Python website has served its purpose over the years, the time has come for the site to progress and complement the growth and maturity of the language itself as well as the vibrancy of the community.
The key goal of the redesign project is to update Python’s official web presence with an eye towards better organizing the information we have today, and expect to add in the future.
The end result aims to help our audience find the information they need whether it’s official information like downloads and documentation, or resources from our vibrant community.
Although the current implementation of the Python website has served its purpose over the years, the time has come for the site to progress and complement the growth and maturity of the language itself as well as the vibrancy of the community.
There’s a lot we want to achieve
- Modern design and experience
- Concise and intuitive navigation
- Showcase the simplicity and elegance of the language
- Attract and convert potential Python users and Python Software Foundation sponsors
- Represent our vibrant, active community
- Make it easy for a wide range of contributors to add content
- Enhance the visibility of the PSF and its sponsors
- Provide examples of success stories
- Enhance the visibility of alternate implementations
- Stable and scalable infrastructure
The redesign involves some tall tasks. From the fresh and modern UI/UX to the online and offline content editing features, no aspect of the project is to be taken lightly, or even incrementally. Such approaches have stalled and ultimately failed in the past, and rapidly outstrip the free time our community of volunteers can dedicate to the project.
The Process
This is a process that started over two years ago with the drafting of the of the Request For Proposals. This year we issued it publicly, and since that time the psf-redesign team grew to include Nick Coghlan, Doug Hellmann, Idan Gazit, Steve Holden, Brian Curtin, Andrew Kuchling, Issac Kelly, Katie Cunningham, Noah Kantrowitz and others.
The team received seven bids in total - all of them which included strong points and compelling stories. The team deliberated, ranked, discussed, and asked questions of the bidders, working through the bids for several months. We were constantly impressed by the high quality, well thought out, professional work that the community members submitted to us.
After the review period came to a close, we had a single bid which ranked higher than any of the others, based on experience, references, and overall quality of the proposal. They'll be working with the second highest rated bid, which contained UI/UX and IA that absolutely floored the reviewers.
The first bid, submitted by a joint effort between Project Evolution and Revolution Systems, was the overall highest ranked bid. The team was unanimous in our recommendation to proceed forward with this bid based on the credentials of the team, quality of the proposal, and their deep understanding of how to work with volunteer organizations, oversight and the community as a whole.
This bid provides a clear project management and accountability system as well as detailing how they wish to work with the community as a whole to achieve the project goals.
Second, we had the Divio.ch team bid. The IA/UX/UI work which they poured over 120 hours into as a company impressed us a great deal. We were quite literally floored by the amount of thought, planning, and work invested in the visual and IA aspects of the Divio bid.
Together with Project Evolution and Revolution Systems leading the project, and the stellar Divio team consulting on the visual/IA aspects of the project, the redesign team and the board is sure that we will be able to deliver a next generation experience. The architecture being developed will achieve all of the goals we set forth when we went down the path of drafting the redesign RFP.
On September 26th, the Python Software Foundation's board of directors unanimously approved the combined bids:
The team received seven bids in total - all of them which included strong points and compelling stories. The team deliberated, ranked, discussed, and asked questions of the bidders, working through the bids for several months. We were constantly impressed by the high quality, well thought out, professional work that the community members submitted to us.
After the review period came to a close, we had a single bid which ranked higher than any of the others, based on experience, references, and overall quality of the proposal. They'll be working with the second highest rated bid, which contained UI/UX and IA that absolutely floored the reviewers.
The first bid, submitted by a joint effort between Project Evolution and Revolution Systems, was the overall highest ranked bid. The team was unanimous in our recommendation to proceed forward with this bid based on the credentials of the team, quality of the proposal, and their deep understanding of how to work with volunteer organizations, oversight and the community as a whole.
This bid provides a clear project management and accountability system as well as detailing how they wish to work with the community as a whole to achieve the project goals.
Second, we had the Divio.ch team bid. The IA/UX/UI work which they poured over 120 hours into as a company impressed us a great deal. We were quite literally floored by the amount of thought, planning, and work invested in the visual and IA aspects of the Divio bid.
Together with Project Evolution and Revolution Systems leading the project, and the stellar Divio team consulting on the visual/IA aspects of the project, the redesign team and the board is sure that we will be able to deliver a next generation experience. The architecture being developed will achieve all of the goals we set forth when we went down the path of drafting the redesign RFP.
On September 26th, the Python Software Foundation's board of directors unanimously approved the combined bids:
RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation accept the Python.org site redesign proposal set forth by Project Evolution / Revolution Systems and Divio with a budget not to exceed $70,000 in total without further board approval.
Overview of the Accepted Bids
The redesign project will completed by the three teams, Project Evolution, RevSys, and Divio, with a division of labor using the best aspects of each team. The project plan and the back end will be handled by members of Project Evolution and RevSys. Members of Project Evolution will handle the front end work, incorporating the guidance of the Divio team.
The accepted bids from the three entities can be found below:
The company relies on the agile SCRUM-methodology for its projects.
The accepted bids from the three entities can be found below:
Project Evolution
Project Evolution (PE) is a design driven development team founded in 1999 with clients ranging from school districts to Fortune 1000 fashion conglomerates with international holdings. The 12-person team includes creative leads, front-end and back-end developers, and associated support staff all committed to open-source technology.Revolution Systems
Revolution Systems, LLC., based in Lawrence, Kansas, was formed in 2002 by Frank Wiles to help businesses benefit from open source software. While many large organizations use open source software internally (sometimes without their knowledge), he realized that many organizations did not know how to properly take advantage of this revolutionary type of software.Divio
Divio, a web agency located in Zürich, Switzerland, builds web applications and is specialised in the areas of design and development. For production, Divio uses the Django web framework and is heavily involved in the development of the successful open source projects django CMS and django SHOP.The company relies on the agile SCRUM-methodology for its projects.
Screenshots, Maybe?
As if the bids and the prospect of the project were not enough to get you excited, I thought I might share some tidbits from the current mockups we're working through:
In Closing
I am sincerely proud, as both a Python community member and PSF director, to have been part of this process. The entire review team, every single submitted bid, and the Foundation's board works tirelessly for a great deal of time pulling together what is already turning out to be an impressive and surprising redesign.
The design will work on mobile devices. It will follow all of the guidelines of the RFP, support accessibility requirements, and much much more.
Most of all, it will showcase our language and global community like it has never has been before.
Jesse Noller (person post on this), Director Python Software Foundation, on behalf of the entire team.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Grants to Assist Kivy, NLTK in Porting to Python 3
From time to time, the Python Software Foundation receives grant requests for projects wishing to receive assistance to complete some task. In the past, grants have gone towards aspects of the PyPy project and the email6 redesign, and have even financed the creation of a new developer guide. Whether it’s a project central to the Python language or any of the great projects this community has created, the PSF is there for all and accepts requests from any projects that provide benefit to the Python community.
Requestors are asked to provide answers to questions such as a project background, what work will be completed, who will be involved, who will benefit, and costs associated with the work. The requests then go before the board of directors, who then debate various aspects of each request and render a decision.
The last two months were very interesting for the board, as we received two requests to help finance the porting of projects to Python 3.
Kivy
In October, the Kivy project reached out to us with a request to fund their porting efforts, where they requested a grant of $5,000 USD. Their plan includes the porting a number of Kivy project dependencies (their Android and iOS tools), the porting of a number of third-party dependencies (e.g., PIL, gstreamer, opencv), some work on their OSX and Windows packaging, and of course, the core Kivy codebase.
On October 17, the board voted to approve the Kivy request. Their porting effort hopes to be a great story for Kivy and Python 3 on a number of platforms and interfaces, as Kivy supports development of applications for desktops, tablets, and phones, and includes support for multi-touch. We’re really looking forward to sharing more details as the Kivy port moves along.
NLTK
Just a few weeks ago, a request came before the board to fund porting efforts for the NLTK project. NLTK is the Natural Language Toolkit, a project which exposes very powerful linguistics tools to Python. For many, NLTK is one of the major remaining roadblocks to Python 3 adoption. As many projects have been ported and many more are working on it, getting NLTK on Python 3 will be huge for the community.
On November 21, Mikhail Korborov was granted $1,000 USD to finish the in-progress port of NLTK under the watchful eye of project lead Steven Bird. Mikhail was recently added as a committer to the project after some time as a contributor, and he’ll be following their plan as laid out on their GitHub repo. Not only will the NTLK port be a boon to wider Python 3 adoption, but it should provide a good story for others to lean on when porting large codebases, especially when it comes to working with Python 3’s Unicode implementation.
We hope you’re as excited as we are to see Kivy and NLTK making moves towards Python 3! We’ll follow up with progress reports as we receive them.
Requestors are asked to provide answers to questions such as a project background, what work will be completed, who will be involved, who will benefit, and costs associated with the work. The requests then go before the board of directors, who then debate various aspects of each request and render a decision.
The last two months were very interesting for the board, as we received two requests to help finance the porting of projects to Python 3.
Kivy
In October, the Kivy project reached out to us with a request to fund their porting efforts, where they requested a grant of $5,000 USD. Their plan includes the porting a number of Kivy project dependencies (their Android and iOS tools), the porting of a number of third-party dependencies (e.g., PIL, gstreamer, opencv), some work on their OSX and Windows packaging, and of course, the core Kivy codebase.
On October 17, the board voted to approve the Kivy request. Their porting effort hopes to be a great story for Kivy and Python 3 on a number of platforms and interfaces, as Kivy supports development of applications for desktops, tablets, and phones, and includes support for multi-touch. We’re really looking forward to sharing more details as the Kivy port moves along.
NLTK
Just a few weeks ago, a request came before the board to fund porting efforts for the NLTK project. NLTK is the Natural Language Toolkit, a project which exposes very powerful linguistics tools to Python. For many, NLTK is one of the major remaining roadblocks to Python 3 adoption. As many projects have been ported and many more are working on it, getting NLTK on Python 3 will be huge for the community.
On November 21, Mikhail Korborov was granted $1,000 USD to finish the in-progress port of NLTK under the watchful eye of project lead Steven Bird. Mikhail was recently added as a committer to the project after some time as a contributor, and he’ll be following their plan as laid out on their GitHub repo. Not only will the NTLK port be a boon to wider Python 3 adoption, but it should provide a good story for others to lean on when porting large codebases, especially when it comes to working with Python 3’s Unicode implementation.
We hope you’re as excited as we are to see Kivy and NLTK making moves towards Python 3! We’ll follow up with progress reports as we receive them.
Monday, October 08, 2012
Simon Cross Awarded Community Service Award
On Friday, Python Software Foundation administrator Ewa Jodlowska presented Simon Cross with the PSF’s Community Service Award for the third quarter.
The award was presented at the first PyCon South Africa in Cape Town, of which Simon is the lead organizer. Simon and team were able to start from the ground up and build a solid conference with a very nice schedule, including many of the community’s best speakers. They even brought in ten sponsors to help keep the conference costs low, including the PSF.
Simon is also a leader in the Cape Town Python User Group, a group which often meets to discuss hot topics in the Python world. Along with talks, the group has been getting together to hack on projects they all use. In 2010 and 2011, the PSF sponsored sprints lead by Simon and crew to port matplotlib and Genshi to Python 3. The matplotlib code was merged but not yet released by the project, and Genshi has been available on Python 3 since shortly after their sprint.
Simon’s efforts also extend around the Python community, where he’s a maintainer of Genshi and contributes to PyPy, among other projects.
The PSF wishes to thank Simon for his efforts with PyCon ZA and everything else he does for the Python community.
Photo by Morgan Collett
The award was presented at the first PyCon South Africa in Cape Town, of which Simon is the lead organizer. Simon and team were able to start from the ground up and build a solid conference with a very nice schedule, including many of the community’s best speakers. They even brought in ten sponsors to help keep the conference costs low, including the PSF.
Simon is also a leader in the Cape Town Python User Group, a group which often meets to discuss hot topics in the Python world. Along with talks, the group has been getting together to hack on projects they all use. In 2010 and 2011, the PSF sponsored sprints lead by Simon and crew to port matplotlib and Genshi to Python 3. The matplotlib code was merged but not yet released by the project, and Genshi has been available on Python 3 since shortly after their sprint.
Simon’s efforts also extend around the Python community, where he’s a maintainer of Genshi and contributes to PyPy, among other projects.
The PSF wishes to thank Simon for his efforts with PyCon ZA and everything else he does for the Python community.
Friday, October 05, 2012
Kenneth Gonsalves Posthumously Awarded Community Service Award
The Python Software Foundation, represented by director David Mertz, posthumously awarded Kenneth Gonsalves with the foundation’s Community Service Award for the third quarter. The award was presented to his daughter last weekend at PyCon India.
Kenneth passed away on August 3, 2012 at the age of 59. After finding the open source world in 1995, he was drawn to the Python community in 2003 and has since taught over 50 seminars on Python and Django in his area. He was also a major contributor to many mailing lists, generously helping as many people as he could.
Kenneth was known for founding and leading the Indian Python Software Society, and is credited with helping to shape the Python community all across India. He was also a well known member of the Django community, where his presence and action will surely be missed.
Outside of software, Kenneth took interest in golf, even becoming a referee and earning international certification. Throughout his time as an official he was assigned to several national tournaments.
In addition to the Community Service Award, the foundation presented a grant of $3500 USD (~190K Rs) to the IPSS to seed an award in Kenneth’s name. The award is planned to be given annually to a community member who goes above and beyond to evangelize, innovate, and mentor other members of the Python community. As much of Kenneth’s work was focused on students, the IPSS wants to see further efforts in growing their community and educating the membership.
Kenneth passed away on August 3, 2012 at the age of 59. After finding the open source world in 1995, he was drawn to the Python community in 2003 and has since taught over 50 seminars on Python and Django in his area. He was also a major contributor to many mailing lists, generously helping as many people as he could.
Kenneth was known for founding and leading the Indian Python Software Society, and is credited with helping to shape the Python community all across India. He was also a well known member of the Django community, where his presence and action will surely be missed.
Outside of software, Kenneth took interest in golf, even becoming a referee and earning international certification. Throughout his time as an official he was assigned to several national tournaments.
In addition to the Community Service Award, the foundation presented a grant of $3500 USD (~190K Rs) to the IPSS to seed an award in Kenneth’s name. The award is planned to be given annually to a community member who goes above and beyond to evangelize, innovate, and mentor other members of the Python community. As much of Kenneth’s work was focused on students, the IPSS wants to see further efforts in growing their community and educating the membership.
Kenneth Gonsalves -- 1952-2012
Photo by Kushal Das
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