[HN Gopher] Google is now a Visionary Sponsor of the Python Soft...
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Google is now a Visionary Sponsor of the Python Software Foundation
Author : Ldorigo
Score : 336 points
Date : 2021-02-13 06:58 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pyfound.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (pyfound.blogspot.com)
| naebother wrote:
| Great, looking forward to migrating to Go once Python 4 is
| finally shutdown in 2023 ;)
|
| But, yeah, ultimately I'm glad any company is contributing to
| upkeep the language, but the whole "Visionary Sponsors",
| "Sustainability Sponsors", "Maintaining Sponsors", "Contributing
| Sponsors", etc distinction between them seems very unnecessary.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Python 4 will be the last breaking change - it moves away from
| Unicode to ASCII bytestrings :D
| m0derator wrote:
| Guys, let's be honest. Python is DYING. Right here, right now.
|
| And this is very sad for me, because in my opinion Python is one
| of the best scripting languages. Unfortunately, Mr. Kitchen
| Hackers, Python has no optimization capabilities. GIL is great
| for calling C code, but it kills the language.
|
| Just shut up and... save this thread. Sooner or later Python will
| die (Google is pt. 1 in this party). And then you'll shed a few
| tears and go program in Rust. Sad, but true.
| vnparker wrote:
| "to contract a developer to help CPython determine what needs to
| take priority through analytical metrics as well as helping
| CPython understand how backlog can be addressed. The role will
| also be responsible for surveying maintainers to paint a better
| landscape of CPython, which will be used to ensure future funding
| and volunteer hours are used efficiently and effectively."
|
| This will turn into a bureaucratic nightmare that increases the
| power of the existing cabal, most of whom already do not provide
| any meaningful code contributions.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> through analytical metrics_
|
| That sounds very "Google." They tend to be quite data-driven.
| Seems to have worked for them. I tend to be a bit sloppier,
| myself.
| ElectricMind wrote:
| Can we now expect "greed" and " privacy violation" as in built
| features of the language, please? Thanks
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Pretty sure one day they'll add telemetry so Google will know
| what and when you are running...
| pansa2 wrote:
| > _to ensure future funding and volunteer hours are used
| efficiently and effectively._
|
| One of the reasons that Python's development has been so
| haphazard in the past few years is because the language is
| primarily developed by volunteers, and the philosophy has been
| that "you can't tell volunteers what to work on". I wonder if
| something's going to change there.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Google paying for approximately 1 developer isn't going to
| change that the vast majority of Python work is done by
| volunteers who the PSF isn't in a position to direct, no.
| pansa2 wrote:
| How are they planning to "ensure volunteer hours are used
| effectively" if they can't direct those volunteers?
| bregma wrote:
| The volunteer hours are used to offer contributions. Those
| contributions are accepted or rejected. If you control what
| gets accepted or rejected, you control the definition of
| how the volunteer hours are used effectively in terms of
| the final result.
|
| Remember: "open source" has never meant anyone can get
| changes upstreamed. It has always only meant anyone can use
| the source downstream. This confusion has resulted in a lot
| of indignant outrage by armchair contributors.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| There is presumably some volunteer work of some kind done
| directly for PSF, which they can direct, but most of the
| Python development work isn't done that way.
|
| You can probably improve (ensure is to strong of a term)
| the effectiveness of outside volunteer development in a
| number of ways, though, such as improving community
| communication of priorities and improving processes around
| accepting, reviewing, and providing feedback on contributed
| code.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Well, if Mozilla is any indicator... Python will become a
| slower clone of Go, dropping useful features and adding ones no
| one asked for, while Python Foundation will acquire a
| completely unrelated data collection company :D
| abrowne wrote:
| Does Google even use Python 3? I thought they were moving things
| from Python 2 to Go. (And Chromium build and debug scripts still
| use Python 2 AFAIK.)
| throwaway19937 wrote:
| Any large organization is already using virtually everything.
| My employer, for example, is much smaller than Google and we
| are using at least a dozen programming languages. It's kind of
| a given that they're using Python 3 somewhere.
| ta988 wrote:
| Google has one director in the newly created Kotlin Foundation.
| Just posted the link to their faq here so we don't hijack the
| discussion here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26124054
| sandGorgon wrote:
| I wish that Google, Dropbox and Instagram would invest some of
| this money in Pypy as well - which has been struggling for funds
| for quite a while.
|
| In fact, I have nothing but the deepest of respect for the Devs
| who built a version of python better than the "officially
| sanctioned one" without having any financial support.
| nt2h9uh238h wrote:
| I'm very confident open-source projects (also like VueJS, Nuxt,
| and many NPM packages) are some of the highest-impact donations
| and philantrophy anyone could make.
| EpicEng wrote:
| Thanks for giving me a good laugh
| elygre wrote:
| I hope that isn't true. For the sake of starving children,
| political dissidents, victims of war, the environment, people
| struck by disease, and many more, I really hope that isn't
| true.
| kortilla wrote:
| From a multiplicative effect and the current lack of funds
| it very well could be. Small improvements to development
| (reduction in bugs, reduction in cpu waste, etc) to things
| as widely used as these could mean that your $1 donated got
| multiplied millions of times in dev time saved.
|
| This massive leverage is sort of unique to open source
| because it's non-rivalrous. Resources you donate like food,
| shelter, etc can only help a limited number of people.
|
| Note that this analysis of highest-impact does not make any
| moral judgements about which is more important. I
| personally would rather pay to help build plumbing in
| Uganda rather than this, but it definitely won't have the
| same leverage.
| learnstats2 wrote:
| > $1 donated got multiplied millions of times in dev time
| saved.
|
| Love that trickle-down economics,
|
| Step 1: less time spent on dev tasks
|
| Step 2: ??????
|
| Step 3: end war, end hunger
| enneff wrote:
| Just the usual tech industry delusions of grandeur.
| [deleted]
| szatkus wrote:
| These are different things and really can't exist without each
| other. CPython developers mainly work on how to make the
| language better. PyPy is focused on how to make the language
| faster.
| cybert00th wrote:
| While I agree this can only benefit the Python community - I'll
| reserve judgement as to whether in the long term this proves to
| be beneficial for the next 3 to 5 years.
| gyformat wrote:
| I'm amazed at the number of people praising Google, which is
| giving a comparatively small sum to a finished late stage
| project.
|
| Many core developers have given an equivalent of that sum in free
| labor and receive no praise. On the contrary, a comment in this
| very thread accuses them of being "white males".
|
| Secondly, just "giving money to OSS" is meaningless. It depends
| on how it is used, who pulls the strings in the background and
| long term effects on the health of the volunteer part (who has
| done virtually all of the _meaningful_ work in Python).
|
| People cite gcc and the Linux kernel. The situation is quite
| different. Sponsorship has started early by companies like SuSE,
| RedHat and Cygnus, who at the time were aligned with the original
| OSS values.
|
| The means of sponsorship was hiring top developers directly,
| bypassing foundations and councils. The is pretty different from
| the bureaucratic process that is being envisioned here.
| sitkack wrote:
| Watch out people! This is has been their long-game-plan all
| along, they are gonna switch Python to two-space indentation as
| mandatory. Big Tech Must Be Stopped!
| pdimitar wrote:
| I have seen numerous current and ex Googlers here in HN (in the
| past) claim that Python is still very prevalent among Google's
| source code base so this is not at all surprising; was bound to
| happen at one point.
|
| Whether they have any other hidden agendas is pure speculation.
| Time will tell.
|
| It's my opinion that they are simply making sure that a
| technology they are very heavily invested in doesn't bleed most
| of its brains out.
| varispeed wrote:
| About time. These multi-billion companies exploited open source
| software and essentially got free labour without having to pay
| salaries and taxes by cynically promoting open source movement
| manipulating developers into giving up their hard work for free
| (exposure). Hopefully the time will come that these companies
| will make big payouts to all people who where manipulated into
| contributing into "open source software" (meaning free labour for
| big corporations).
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Comparing open source development to a forced labor camp is a
| stretch.
|
| I wouldn't hold my breath for a "big payout" -- a company will
| invest in what they find is necessary. Maybe it's a gold
| sponsor, maybe a junior engineer hire or more. The market is
| efficient in my view and everyone involved benefits. The
| disconnect I see is the delusion that open source
| contributor(s) are owed something because someone else found
| the software useful. They seem to so quickly forget that they
| picked the liscense and that liscense is being used as
| designed.
|
| Your narrative is not productive. Instead, maybe advocate for
| cultural change in what it means to adopt open source
| technology, eliminate barriers for monetary or other forms of
| support. It's unlikely the intent of adoters is to be laughing
| all the way to the bank as you're claiming.
| varispeed wrote:
| My point is that big companies promote open source movement
| as a way to save on R&D spending. They'll see what people
| make for free and then pick up what sticks without paying
| anything for the effort. In many countries you can't hire
| someone to do work for free, even if they agree and you have
| at least pay minimum wage. The same should apply for open
| source software. Big companies should not be allowed to use
| it without reimbursing all contributors even if they license
| the code as public domain. This needs to stop as this is a
| modern way of labour exploitation. People make literally
| billions of off python and its time they share that profits
| with the developers and pay appropriate taxes!
| drstewart wrote:
| Your point is bad.
|
| If you don't want companies to use your work without
| paying, then don't open source it under free licenses.
| Simple, simple solution. You can't make something freely
| available and then complain when people use it. You don't
| get to choose both sides of the argument.
| varispeed wrote:
| The problem is that this is mostly done by people from
| privileged white background who can afford to give their
| work away for free and that puts into disadvantage people
| who simply cannot do that, because they need to pay bills
| and feed their families. For the same reason in many
| countries companies are not able to accept free labour,
| they have to pay at least a minimum wage for this reason
| as these spots would have been taken by people with rich
| parents "who want to find themselves" and poor people
| would miss out. This levels up the playing field. If you
| think deeper about this issue, you should be able to
| notice that this is somewhat a loophole around this
| legislation packaged into a nice and catchy marketing.
| kortilla wrote:
| > These multi-billion companies exploited open source software
|
| > promoting open source movement manipulating developers into
| giving up their hard work for free
|
| Make up your mind, were they exploiting open source by using it
| or were they getting more people to contribute to open source?
| You know the point of contributing to open source is it make it
| open source, right?
|
| Do you exploit open source by using Linux instead of paying for
| Windows? Do you exploit open source by celebrating open source
| developers?
| varispeed wrote:
| This is not mutually exclusive
|
| > were they exploiting open source by using it
|
| Yes, they were profiting from labour they didn't pay for
|
| > or were they getting more people to contribute to open
| source
|
| Yes they promote open source so they can get more work done
| for free
|
| > You know the point of contributing to open source is it
| make it open source, right?
|
| That's the idea, but reality is that this is a loophole where
| big corporations save on R&D and get work done without having
| to pay salaries and taxes. In many countries you cannot hire
| someone without paying them even if they agree to work for
| free and the same should apply to software.
|
| > Do you exploit open source by using Linux instead of paying
| for Windows?
|
| The problem is that it is difficult to reward all the people
| who contributed to Linux and that needs to change.
|
| > Do you exploit open source by celebrating open source
| developers?
|
| That makes little sense. If you embrace open source you are
| actually helping big companies getting free labour.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > In many countries you cannot hire someone without paying
| them even if they agree to work for free and the same
| should apply to software.
|
| In those countries, am I permitted to shovel my neighbor's
| sidewalk or mow their lawn? Can I help a friend paint a
| room or change a tire? Am I permitted to write a poem and
| share it for free? Can I publish scientific findings that I
| might have created?
|
| > If you embrace open source you are actually helping big
| companies getting free labour.
|
| I see it as "Yes, and:" We are helping all humans avoid the
| tedium and drudgery of solving now-pointless problems
| because they have already been solved, avoid introducing
| novel security bugs, and overall to help us collectively
| stand on the shoulders of giants rather than on the toes.
|
| That does help large companies avoid creating a bunch of
| tedious, pointless, repetitive work which humans would have
| to forfeit large chunks of their lives solving. That sounds
| like a _feature_ rather than a bug to me.
|
| It also helps small companies afford to offer tech-based
| solutions and to better utilize the constrained pool of
| "people who are good at programming".
| varispeed wrote:
| You are comparing apples to oranges. Your neighbour will
| not make billions of off your shoveled sidewalk and you
| won't have to spend years perfecting the art of shoveling
| just to perform that task over multiple months.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Is it illegal for them to hire me (or ask me and direct
| me) to shovel their sidewalk for free or not? Does the
| legality depend on their making billions?
|
| I think you're crossing legal and moral arguments. I
| might decide to shovel my fixed-income pensioner
| neighbor's sidewalk for free while deciding to not shovel
| Larry Ellison's sidewalk on the other side of my property
| even if he asked nicely (which I doubt he would).
|
| That's a moral/ethical choice on my part, but the law
| everywhere probably allows that transaction.
|
| If you don't want to contribute your time, skills, and
| attention to open-source, I don't see anyone suggesting
| that you be forced to do so. You are the one claiming
| that there's something that _ought to be illegal_ about
| it, with which I disagree.
| varispeed wrote:
| In my country it is illegal, however it wouldn't be
| enforced as this is a minor thing, but if you were a
| registered company and tried to get someone to clean the
| pavement around your office for free, then you could get
| into a serious problem. Even if the person agreed to do
| it for free, they could then report your for not paying a
| minimum wage.
| [deleted]
| cnla wrote:
| That time will never come. Do you think that Google will pay
| all 100 core developers who actually built the language
| retroactively?
|
| No, it's a power grab, because full time developers plowing
| through the code base and working on minor issues crowd out the
| actual IP creators and make them leave.
|
| Expect a dull, boring corporate controlled maintenance age
| where one or two people do mundane work and directors of
| various foundations and groups take the credit.
| varispeed wrote:
| > Do you think that Google will pay all 100 core developers
| who actually built the language retroactively?
|
| That would be an ideal scenario to be honest. If company
| wants to use the work, they should pay for it and for all
| time that lead to it or developers should be required by law
| to change licenses so that companies would have to pay either
| a subscription or a fixed fee for the software version.
|
| That divide between boring development and rock star seeding
| indeed exists and typically people working on IP have their
| own companies and contract out their work. They create a PoC
| and then company employees make it into a product. That used
| to work well in the UK, but law has changed to be more akin
| to the US rules where you can't provide IT services as a
| small company (typically one man) and you have to be an
| employee.
| enneff wrote:
| Did you know that many (most?) key open source contributors are
| employed by companies specifically to keep working on their
| open source projects? This is true of kernel developers,
| language maintainers, and many more.
| varispeed wrote:
| Open source contributors are typically privileged white men
| who can afford to work for free and give away their work
| because they can and they enjoy showing off. This puts people
| from poor backgrounds who can't afford to spend days on
| projects for free as they have bills to pay and mouths to
| feed at severe disadvantage. Why companies would hire
| developers if these cool kids give everything away for free?
| This is much bigger problem than you think.
| mltvc wrote:
| So you presume that there is a fixed amount of development
| work to be done at companies and by using open source
| software for free they are hiring less people?
| youre_a_racist wrote:
| > _Open source contributors are typically privileged white
| men who can afford to work for free and give away their
| work because they can and they enjoy showing off._
|
| Good point, we should string up all these white bastards
| from the nearest lamp post.
|
| How dare these pale-skinned, cock-wielding scum contribute
| to the common good!
| mrmonkeyman wrote:
| Goodbye Python.
| alain94040 wrote:
| Here's a suggestion for really funding open source. Donations
| have produced minuscule results.
|
| I think we agree the engineers want their employer to fund open
| source. It's up to us to establish a new normal: if your company
| relies on open source technologies, you are expected to give back
| 0.1% of your revenue to open source projects. That's it.
|
| Obviously, the challenge is to go from today's situation, where 0
| companies give 0.1% of their revenue to open source foundations,
| to 1. Maybe an open source startup will be the first. Then a
| second. Then maybe the Google engineers can pressure Google to
| join this program. And maybe, just maybe, in 10 years, it's
| become expected, and most tech companies do it.
|
| (a) 0.1% is an example, chosen to be low enough that it doesn't
| impact the financial results of the company, but large enough
| that it dwarfs all current donations to open source.
|
| (b) if you are worried about the complexity of donating to
| multiple open source projects, you can imagine that a company
| could donate its share in one chunk to some open source
| foundation, which then redistributes among individual open source
| projects.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Google has earned billions thanks to techs like python, and never
| contributed much to it compared to what it gained.
|
| Then suddenly this.
|
| Now I'm wondering if MS hiring Guido triggered some reaction to
| not loose control of what is currently one of the most popular
| language in the world. Or something else I don't know about.
|
| I really want to rejoice. My favorite language gets $ 350k.
|
| Yet I can't help but be suspicious of philanthropy coming from
| big players. I'm getting cynical and always look for a PR,
| strategic investments or counter attacks.
| geofft wrote:
| The Python Software Foundation ordinarily raises funds via
| PyCon sponsorship, but PyCon was online last year and this year
| and who knows about next year, so in-person booths are much
| less valuable. Therefore, the PSF has been trying to switch to
| direct sponsorship. Google has been sponsoring PyCon at a high
| level for a long time.
|
| Also, Google uses Python heavily and employs at least one
| Python core dev off the top of my head (almost certainly quite
| a few more), so there are engineers there with a sense of the
| PSF's finances and enough seniority to influence folks who
| decide on donations.
|
| That's the most obvious angle to explain this. It's a strategic
| investment - Google cares about Python and they know the PSF
| needs money.
| peter_retief wrote:
| Everyone uses Python it is probably the most used language
| ever. I think it is really nice that Google gave the
| organisation some cash. If Google are trying to buy some
| goodwill in the developer community it is working.
| bla3 wrote:
| It's probably "now" because it's the sponsorship program got
| revamped, see https://www.python.org/psf/sponsorship-new/
|
| They probably get their logo on the python.org website
| somewhere, and $350k isn't a ton of money. p The reason is PR.
| Still, good for the python foundation to have a program that
| allows it to harvest some of the PR budget out there.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Right. It's a good thing for the psf and it doesn't look like
| there a string attached.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| I normally think overanalyzing where organizations spend
| their money is misguided, but I was surprised that the
| largest dollar amount on the infographic was spent
| "strengthening trademarks".
|
| Here's what I found under the details link. Does anyone
| understand what this actually means?
|
| > One major component of the PSF's mission is protecting
| Python-related intellectual property. To strengthen the PSF's
| trademarks and copyrights for Python, PyCon, and PyPI, the
| PSF spent over $198,000 USD in 2019 and $77,000 through
| October 2020.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's probably mostly money paid to lawyers (to do various
| legal tasks associated with maintaining the trademarks).
| ilaksh wrote:
| They earned billions and gave $350k? Actually it says $150k for
| Visionary.
|
| If it was 2 billion then they contributed less than 1/500th of
| what they received.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Not sure what is so "downvotable" about the parent comment.
| It merely states a calculation result. Is it factually wrong
| or something? Anyone care to explain? Personally I would have
| gone further and called it "peanuts" for Google.
| nexthash wrote:
| A lot of people here are accusing Google of embrace, extend, and
| extinguish, but you have to realize that the incentives here are
| different from Big Tech's point of view. I'd first like to point
| out Python is a programming language, not an internet standard or
| file format. It gets its utility merely from the ability to
| develop in it, even without an established ecosystem or network
| effect. The barrier to jump in, or fork off and start over is far
| lower compared to a browser or file format.
|
| So what's in it for Big Tech? Well, in a situation where
| controlling the technology or suppressing it is difficult due to
| the low costs of starting over, it is in their best interest to
| promote the ecosystem rather than control it. When they put in
| the time, money, and engineers to make it better the return on
| investment can be massive, because of the help they get from the
| community to grow, maintain, and keep compatible this core
| component at less cost than if they did it themselves.
|
| The incentives align and benefit everyone, especially if there is
| a fair governance system mediating between all parties involved.
| The biggest threat to an open source project is therefore not Big
| Tech collaboration, but project abandonment and lack of
| maintenance. I hope this makes everyone a little more optimistic
| about the direction of open source, especially as companies
| realize the real value it can have for all involved.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| While I am publicly critical of Google (and more so, Facebook),
| I also really appreciate their support for Python, TensorFlow,
| pre-trained deep learning models, etc. Even Facebook gets
| credit for releasing some very useful tools.
|
| Nothing is black and white in the world. Personally, I use
| products that I pay for from Google (GCP, YouTube Music, etc.)
| and Facebook (Oculus VR), but I stay away from "free" stuff
| paid for by data that is owned by me.
| amelius wrote:
| Let's see if we get Python for Android development.
| pjmlp wrote:
| The support that Go and Dart have on Android development is
| done by their own team efforts, with zero support from
| Android team.
|
| In fact, Jetpack Composer and Kotlin cross platform are
| pretty much a counter attack on Flutter.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Currently you have 2 options:
|
| - https://beeware.org/
|
| - https://kivy.org/
|
| I doubt Google is going to sponsor any though.
| tal8d wrote:
| A company can damage an open source project in a number of
| creative ways that have nothing to do with file formats. One
| word: Oracle. OpenOffice vs LibreOffice is a pretty good
| example of plausibly deniable sabotage that would enjoy a bonus
| with the number of people interjecting, index finger raised,
| with "Actually, Hanlon's razor..." To be fair to Oracle, Sun
| didn't help that situation at all, Oracle just ratcheted it up.
| konjin wrote:
| Sufficiently advanced malice is indistinguishable from
| incompetence.
| kps wrote:
| _Simple Sabotage Field Manual_ (Office of Strategic
| Services, 1944) is full of suggestions along these lines,
| which appear to still be in wide use.
| higerordermap wrote:
| This needs a wikipedia entry.
| gjvc wrote:
| This is "Grey's law", mentioned at
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws
| konjin wrote:
| It's reversed. You look like a harmless idiot while being
| a harmful mastermind.
| carapace wrote:
| Malice is itself a form of incompetence.
| tal8d wrote:
| I prefer the more mean spirited "aggressively stupid", but
| I don't want to tempt a splintering of the "Hanlon's razor"
| people - I'm quite happy with the mental image I have of
| them already.
| oneplane wrote:
| You can always go deeper:
|
| 1. Not malice but incompetence
|
| 2. Actually malice, trying to make it look like
| incompetence, but being incompetent at that makes it...
| both?
|
| 3. Actually being competent at feigning incompetence (the
| ultimate malice?), perhaps we need to develop a new
| 'razor' for that.
| doof_warrior wrote:
| I am one of those people, so I will respond.
|
| > The barrier to jump in, or fork off and start over is far
| lower compared to a browser or file format.
|
| False. Its way easier to switch browsers than for a company to
| switch to an alternative Python implementation. Cpython is the
| defacto standard that the other implementations follow. What
| you are suggesting is that if Python 4 breaks your code base
| you are free to fork off Python 3 and keep the just the changes
| you like. This is absurd.
|
| > The biggest threat to an open source project is therefore not
| Big Tech collaboration, but project abandonment and lack of
| maintenance.
|
| Python is in no danger of abandonment.
|
| Anyhow. It appears you represent Google, so know this: We are
| watching carefully. Any attempt to subvert Python will be
| publicized and have a disproportionate response from the user
| community.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Any attempt to subvert Python will be publicized and have a
| disproportionate response from the user community.
|
| Google is subverting the web, and the only disproportionate
| response from the user community is "Chrome is good, Safari
| is bad, FF needs to keep up with Chrome"
| vntok wrote:
| > Anyhow. It appears you represent Google, so know this: We
| are watching carefully. Any attempt to subvert Python will be
| publicized and have a disproportionate response from the user
| community.
|
| Who is 'we' in your sentence? Please do not speak for the
| community at large. For many Python users, as well as for the
| Foundation, as well as for many companies building on Python
| stacks, Google's allocating part of its vast resources to the
| continued development of Python is considered a Good
| Thing(tm) that brings a net financial benefit in the short
| term as well as an increased peace of mind in the medium-to-
| long term.
| seaman1921 wrote:
| their 'we' represents a bunch of big-mouthed folks who
| themselves never did anything for the Python or any other
| community but are quick to shit post any good that big-tech
| tries to do.
| nexthash wrote:
| Haha, you mean that _you_ are watching me. I do not represent
| Google. Don 't worry, you don't have to fear any Google
| psych-ops trying to brainwash you into accepting its
| contributions to Python: Google is probably too big to care
| about such things. If caught any such behavior would probably
| cause a massive stink. And dude, there is literally only one
| free browser left: Firefox.
|
| All other browsers are derivatives of Chromium at this point
| or have barely any users, made even worse by the way Google
| executed EEE on web standards with DRM extensions. It takes
| _enormous_ resources to write a battle-tested browser viable
| for the web. It is far easier for someone to write a script
| interpreter for their own uses. HN is written in Arc Lisp,
| for example.
| my123 wrote:
| There's Apple still, with WebKit.
|
| WebKit is open-source (LGPLv2) and used in GNOME Web
| (Epiphany) on Linux notably. (in addition of Safari on
| macOS and iOS)
| [deleted]
| doof_warrior wrote:
| Reposting this comment because it was flagged even though it
| had a high upvote count...
|
| Beware: Its events like this that cause organized resistance
| and then alternatives to Big Tech and even this board.
|
| --
|
| I am one of those people, so I will respond.
|
| > The barrier to jump in, or fork off and start over is far
| lower compared to a browser or file format.
|
| False. Its way easier to switch browsers than for a company to
| switch to an alternative Python implementation. Cpython is the
| defacto standard that the other implementations follow. What
| you are suggesting is that if Python 4 breaks your code base
| you are free to fork off Python 3 and keep the just the changes
| you like. This is absurd.
|
| > The biggest threat to an open source project is therefore not
| Big Tech collaboration, but project abandonment and lack of
| maintenance.
|
| Python is in no danger of abandonment.
| sokoloff wrote:
| How much code is still running on python 2.x today?
| throwaway19937 wrote:
| We have at least 3 currently supported vendor apps that use
| Python 2.7.
| oneplane wrote:
| Too much
| wyclif wrote:
| A lot of "data science" code in non-software companies.
| oneplane wrote:
| Also a lot of 'unmanaged' code that was put in place and
| doesn't have an owner. Combined with backwards backwards
| compatibility (looking at you, AWS Lambda Runtimes) some
| of the code might not be updated any time soon because
| there is no value in it. This would apply to container
| images as well I suppose.
| [deleted]
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > The incentives align and benefit everyone
|
| I see your point and I'd tend to agree, except that we've all
| seen cases of successful projects suffering under the umbrella
| of a big company. If Google took care of Nim or D, I'd be more
| than happy. But Python? It's doing well, they better leave it
| alone.
| nexthash wrote:
| Yeah, Python has been the wonder child of the programming
| world for as long as I can remember. People have very strong
| beliefs on the subject - I remember how everybody went up in
| arms over the walrus operator (a := b) issue. I hope that all
| parties involved appreciate Python's position and longevity,
| while approaching the task of maintaining it with respect. I
| personally do not expect Google or any other Big Tech to be
| running roughshod over such a treasure anytime soon.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| While personally I feel adding features might be
| cointerproductive, there are probably two features that
| would gain unanimous acceptance: (1) removing the GIL -
| involving an unimaginable amount of work, (2) increasing
| the speed of CPython itself.
| seaman1921 wrote:
| >they better leave it alone.
|
| Or you will do what pleb ? - how about you let Google choose
| where it wants to put its money. I use Python regularly and
| have never touched Nim or D so I personally support this.
| bigodbiel wrote:
| can we expect better/official integration with android platform?
| kevindong wrote:
| The list of sponsors for the PSP [0] is surprisingly short
| considering how relatively affordable it is [1]:
|
| Visionary: $150k (this is the level created for Google)
|
| Sustainability: $90k
|
| Maintaining: $60k
|
| Contributing: $30k
|
| Supporting: $15k
|
| Partner: $7.5k
|
| Participating: $3.75k
|
| Associate: $1.5k
|
| [0]: https://www.python.org/psf/sponsorship/sponsors/
|
| [1]: https://www.python.org/sponsors/application/
| b0tzzzzzzman wrote:
| Oh great, I am sure they won't ask for anything in return. Some
| tele3_etey here, some downloads there, and before you know it..
|
| TLDR long rant ... Boiled down. G00gl3 didn't do this selflessly.
| No praise, no PR, no prepared BS.
| yhoneycomb wrote:
| uh oh
| z77dj3kl wrote:
| Google has in the order of 2^16 software engineers, and it's
| hungry for more. It makes complete sense to invest and promote
| projects and programming languages that are heavily used within
| Google, just to make hiring easier and not having to train
| everyone up on some obscure stuff.
|
| I think that's one of the main reasons they've been pushing stuff
| like protobuf and gRPC out there: just so that people outside
| have some exposure when they end up getting hired.
| ziofill wrote:
| I am shocked that Google gets so much praise for giving so
| little, but I'm even more shocked about the hypocrisy of other
| giants (e.g. Microsoft) Who give what, 60k?
| isodev wrote:
| It's good to see some of those ad money going back to OSS. Google
| owns its entire existence to technology and innovations created
| outside of Google.
| enneff wrote:
| Google has been putting a lot of money into open source for
| decades, in many different ways.
| bratah wrote:
| Isn't 350k salary of an engineer in silicon valley?
| hexo wrote:
| Meh, even Microsoft seems to be better at sponsoring open source
| projects.
| tarruda wrote:
| > CPython Developer in Residence
|
| Can someone explain what this means?
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I used to try and raise funds for the UK pycon (I was very bad at
| it) and my biggest takeaway was that most devs were infavour of
| their company forking over some cash, but "charity" was a tough
| sell internally. The best results was selling "booths" at the
| conference. But that had more cost to the sponsor than just the
| cash we asked for.
|
| I have been mulling on Something that makes it less charity -
| purchasing a "not really support" option. This might be a annual
| membership, in return for which you get ... early access to
| annual roadmap pdf. Or an online video from the main devs
| explaining what they are doing for five minutes (#)
|
| What if there existed something to Make the above easy and simply
| to do - a small foundation who's job is to keep membership rolls
| and accept payments from companies on behalf of any foss project
| that signs up (it's something I imagine patreon could offer).
| They then ensure that the (minimal contract) is adhered to in
| some manner.
|
| (#) Seriously - you could set up a zoom call with 1-5 devs and
| just hit record once a year - I promise that 99% will see this as
| unbearable imposition and then talk for two hours. And that's
| "actionable paid insights into the future of this tool we depend
| on"
|
| So the point being, if your FOSS project gets traction, then sign
| up to this foss-patreon, tell everyone to click to subscribe and
| you might might get a sponsor or two.
| 0xfaded wrote:
| I've been in a similar place raising funds for a makerspace.
| Sponsorship is a marketing expense for a company and can be
| accounted for as a cost of doing business. A private donation
| is hit by income tax and, where I live, depending on the
| structure VAT.
|
| I used to be 100% against tax deductible contributions to not-
| for-profits. I've turned 180 on this. Citizens are much better
| at allocating funds to worthy causes than a central government.
|
| In the case of our Makerspace, we couldn't get any public
| funding because we didn't fit into a predefined category such
| as a "sports team", and operating a garage full of tools could
| be seen as competing with private industry. Somehow there was
| money available for the lawyers who delivered that opinion to
| the local government though.
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| In the UK, a company can deduct a charitable donation from
| its profits before calculating income tax.
|
| For an individual, the charity can claim the basic rate tax
| the individual paid (Gift Aid) and higher rate tax payers can
| claim the higher rate taxes using their self assessment, so
| in round numbers, it doesn't really matter who makes the
| donation.
|
| That being said, it relies on there being a UK charity, which
| a lot of software foundations are not.
|
| (Aside: I work for a US company that does support US
| foundations, as well as employ a few CPython core devs)
| chippiewill wrote:
| Individual still has to pay NI on their charitable
| contributions though.
| ValentineC wrote:
| I'm trying to turn around a bleeding hackerspace.
|
| Did you end up coming up with company sponsorship plans for
| your makerspace? What kind of perks did you offer your
| sponsors?
| 0xfaded wrote:
| Facebook actually came in with a generous contribution. We
| also had a couple local people make private donations.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| > Citizens are much better at allocating funds to worthy
| causes than a central government.
|
| You kind of threw this out there. What makes you think this,
| is it something different about a charitable cause versus say
| health care? Both are distributing the same resources.
|
| I might agree that decentralized decision making about
| resources is superior, but even that is full of caveats. I'm
| not sure why you think independently unorganized citizens are
| better than a group of citizens whose official capacity is to
| allocate (ie why call out government as something different?
| The important piece is centralized/decentralized, not govt vs
| citizen.)
|
| At least it is supported in the literature - the lag and loss
| of resolution in reporting back centrally makes decisions a
| worse fit for actual conditions on the ground.
| alex_portabella wrote:
| How would you feel something like Help Jar
| (https://helpjar.org) fits into this space.
|
| It's a platform I've created where you can allocate anywhere
| from 0.1 - 5% of revenue to causes you believe in. Right now
| it's geared towards charities but I'd love to include open
| source sponsorship in there too.
| 0xfaded wrote:
| I like the idea, and kudos for keeping your costs at 1%.
|
| Putting on my company hat, and I'm no expert, I believe for
| this to work in Denmark (where I live), you would need to
| be able to put some form of goodwill on the balance sheet.
| Companies still need to pay tax on donations (at a reduced
| rate up to ~2300EUR/year for recognized charities).
|
| Unfortunately, 0.5% of the Danish workforce is directly
| employed by the tax office. It's a serious threat over
| here.
| jl6 wrote:
| Kudos for a creative approach.
|
| It is 100% correct that bigcorps find it much easier to make
| purchases than donations. One-off charges are also much easier
| to sell than subscriptions as they get treated as depreciable
| capex and are less vulnerable to being optimized away by future
| cost-saving initiatives.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I agree with it being easier, but I din't think that a
| contribution of this form would be accounted for as a capital
| expense. It would a one-time operating expense if not a
| donation.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| I was a corporate sponsor of PyConUK [1] and PyData London and
| this mirrors my experience.
|
| At the time, JPMorgan had around 4500 Python devs globally and
| many of the FX/Commodities/Credit/Rates trading systems were
| Python-based (Google for Athena or watch [2]).
|
| I felt the bank had gained hugely from the Python community so
| it was only appropriate to give something back. Fortunately I
| had lots of support from my MD internally. Ultimately the
| budgets were controlled from New York and it took time for the
| approval discussion between London and New York to conclude.
|
| We took sponsorship packages that included logo on banners, an
| intro during the opening keynote, a recruiting booth, and entry
| passes for 10 of our devs. The money paid to PyConUK was small
| in corporate terms, and certainly less than the cost of the
| time I and the recruiting lead invested in getting it going.
|
| The net result was a good amount of exposure, lots of people
| saying "I didn't know JPMorgan used Python", two direct hires I
| think, and useful support for Python in the UK.
|
| I'm no longer at JPMorgan but as long as my future employers
| benefit from my Python experience, I'll look for ways for them
| to give back to the community. If you are in the same position,
| please encourage your employer to do it too. (I'm happy to be
| quoted on the benefits; my email is in my profile here).
|
| [1] https://pyvideo.org/pycon-uk-2017/pycon-uk-2017-jp-morgan-
| sp...
|
| [2] https://pyvideo.org/pydata-london-2018/python-at-massive-
| sca...
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I remember JP Morgan putting on a very good show that year in
| Cardiff, and if memory serves you signed off a meaningful
| sponsorship sum (#) over coffee in Canary Wharf.
|
| My takeaway from that surprisingly short deal was that with
| FOSS the real hard part (demonstrating value) is done and
| dusted long before any money conversations come up.
|
| Most people I have had this conversation with in companies
| large and small are like Steve above - see the value of FoSS
| to their business and want to both give something back and
| more importantly support the producers of an important input
| to their business.
|
| FOSS does not have and probably cannot have the "money for
| licenses" business model, but that's not to say there are not
| decent lines of funding that cannot be tapped.
|
| It's a frustration, yes but both sides are aligned in this.
|
| (#) For various definitions of meaningful I guess.
| timkpaine wrote:
| The recruitment angle has always been pretty successful, and
| now with JP's extensive open source work exposure to
| collaborators and emerging projects has become valuable for
| participants at these conferences.
|
| With the pandemic, I moved us from being just a pycon sponsor
| to sponsoring the psf directly
| (https://www.python.org/psf/sponsorship/sponsors/), though
| without a senior MD championing these types of initiatives
| it's always up to lower level employees being vocal and
| committed enough to push.
| jmiserez wrote:
| I like the idea, and "actionable paid insights into the future
| of this tool we depend on" might be a good sell. But maybe
| don't make it a subscription, one off payments can be easier to
| get approval for even if they occur every year.
|
| Another thought: Often devs have a yearly budget that can be
| spent relatively freely on
| training/conferences/courses/books/etc. Conferences and travel
| are expensive, but with everything going on it's not being used
| as much. I'm sure people would pay to get on a Zoom call or Q&A
| with a few core devs if it comes out of that budget. Price it
| pretty high, perhaps a few hundred $ per participant, maybe add
| country-dependent pricing or make exceptions for OSS
| projects/etc. Basically a fundraiser with a training/conference
| talk component.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I always proposed that the way forward is training, consulting,
| and speciality services. I've seen this model work so much
| better than most, and for languages seems more obvious (I'm
| less sure how to handle the problem for packages in an
| ecosystem that also deserve funding)
|
| I always wondered why that wasn't the PSF model (having a
| business arm that provides these things to fund development and
| other initiatives like putting together conferences)
|
| With Python in particular I've heard first hand from people who
| I have no reason to believe wouldn't pay for what they're
| saying: specific language features or enhancements. It's
| impossible to donate directly to the PSF or otherwise for it be
| a line item for that specific purpose though, and I think in
| Pythons case it has hurt their ability to raise funds, maybe
|
| Complex topic for sure!
| danmur wrote:
| I like your idea. Lots of people are willing to contribute
| something but it needs to be easier and (even superficially)
| give something in return. Core team interviews, roadmaps etc.
| It's more work but it could pay off.
|
| Not really related but a barrier for me in contributing to
| something new has been I'm already on recurring donations for a
| few things and it's easy to lose track. It would be nice if
| there were a solution to that.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I like privacy.com for things like this and you might also.
| You link your bank account and then you can set up on-the-fly
| credit cards with any name/address and arbitrary limits. You
| can set a maximum credit limit, or monthly recurring limits,
| or other configurations. It's also great for one time
| payments for shopping online.
|
| I think they even have a rewards program now.
|
| I highly recommend it if you can get over the
| uncomfortableness of linking a bank account to it. I just
| created a separate online account for this purpose.
|
| In this case, I'd just create a separate card for each
| project you want to support with a monthly limit equal to
| your desired amount. They have an app and browser plugins and
| the like. It's really easy.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| > but "charity" was a tough sell internally
|
| Do not try to sell charity. Sell it as the investment is is.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| That was the point I was trying to make - "we" (society) see
| FOSS as a commons good, so it suffers from the tragedy. But
| to try and get some of the value following to the creators,
| we could make the path of companies easier to hand over cash
| - buying relatively small amounts of "access" ( it that has
| its own downsides)
|
| Basically this is a hard problem and without a market
| solution it's unlikely to ever get within spitting distance
| of fair. But I cannot see the market solution.
| some_anon_dude wrote:
| > FOSS as a commons good, so it suffers from the tragedy
|
| If only there was a way to get a bit of money from
| everybody to pay for common goods...
| codazoda wrote:
| I subscribed to some type of MySQL Support 15 years ago. It was
| about $150 a month and I figured I would never need it. One day
| I had a really difficult problem, so I emailed support. We went
| back and forth a few times and then they informed me that their
| "support" plan meant I was supporting their project, not that
| they would support me. I guess I got fired as a customer. This
| was the first time I had heard of this. Calling it "support"
| made it easy for the company to justify and buy.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Darn that English language !
|
| But that's a great little trick - the accounts department
| sees "annual support plan" and thinks _they_ are buying
| support _from_ the project - but really ... :-)
| asicsp wrote:
| Probably add a 'Pay what you want' option in download pages as
| well.
|
| From my own experience, I got just one donation in about a year
| of giving away free learning material. I then tried out ebooks
| (which was initially paid option only, but later switched to
| free online version and paid pdf/epub). This set up now pays my
| living expenses and recently started saving a bit as well.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I don't make much money on eBooks (compared to writing ten
| books for publishers like McGraw-Hill, J. Riley, Springer
| Verlag, etc.) but I so much prefer self published eBooks - so
| easy to push updates and new editions! I have one eBook that
| sells very few copies (on the super niche Lisp Hy language)
| and I decided to make the minimum price free last month. The
| sales actually increased.
|
| Anyway, probably the best model at least for me is to make
| eBooks freely available, but with an optional ability to pay
| for a book.
| codazoda wrote:
| I'm currently trying, and failing, at the paid only ebook
| option. Maybe I'll give this a go. What is your book?
| asicsp wrote:
| My marketing strategy is basically give away ebooks for
| free at launch and promote on social media. A few readers
| still pay for them (which is what I wanted from donation
| model). I write short books (about 100 pages), so I end up
| doing 2-4 a year (but losing interest now). Then bundle
| related books. And so on. You can find book links from my
| profile.
| some_anon_dude wrote:
| > "charity" was a tough sell internally
|
| I've been saying this for decades:
|
| For-profit companies are expected to generate profit for the
| shareholders. As such, donations are hard to justify.
|
| - Most technical teams have pre-approved budgets for licenses,
| SaaS, consultancy services.
|
| - Most teams do not have pre-approved budgets for donations.
| Managers need to go through bureaucracy and justify it.
|
| - Donating to organizations that are not famous charities can
| look suspicious (think bribery & so on). Donating to an
| informal group more so. Donating to some person on GitHub even
| more so. Imagine lawyers and accountants having to explain it
| to some tax agency.
|
| - Many countries don't have the tax relief and loopholes that
| encourage donations
| yannoninator wrote:
| This is all perfectly fine, surely this would not happen to Rust
| any time soon. Nothing to see here, just another big tech giant
| sinking its teeth deeper into the direction of a programming
| language.
|
| I welcome this new power grab from Google, bravo.
| gtirloni wrote:
| Although a small amount of cynism is warranted, do you have any
| evidence that this indeed the case?
| yannoninator wrote:
| Shouldn't we be suspicious of big tech companies bearing
| gifts like this?
|
| You wouldn't throw $350K and ask nothing in return.
| doof_warrior wrote:
| Google has ZERO incentive for the python ecosystem to flourish.
| Remember the breaking 3.0 change came when Guido was an employee
| there, and go was starting to get mainstream traction.
|
| I agree with the embrace-extinguish crowd. The strategy will be
| to introduce a huge breaking change in the next release.
|
| This is a corporation. They don't do things for free. What
| started out as a "free" browser turned into a vehicle to capture
| a monopoly on internet video. What makes you think they dont have
| a long term plan to profit from python?
| gerash wrote:
| I'd bet someone here would write some QAnon-level conspiracy
| theory on how this is bad news and here it is.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Changing to 3.0 hardly killed Python. The strategy to get rid
| of a project is not to introduce breaking changes, but just let
| it die through neglect.
|
| You don't need a scheme to kill a plant. You can just stop
| watering it.
| yunohn wrote:
| >> Guido was an employee there, and go was starting to get
| mainstream traction.
|
| So your conspiracy theory is that Guido, the BDFL at the time,
| colluded with Google, who use python for numerous products, to
| destroy python and popularize Golang......?
| doof_warrior wrote:
| Yes. Track most breaking changes and broken libraries to the
| authors and you will see a Google connection.
| bzb6 wrote:
| That's interesting. You should write a post or something
| with all the links, because if you're right that's going to
| be spicy.
| vendiddy wrote:
| Many who complain about tech companies using open source without
| giving back will also complain when they start sponsoring it.
| asah wrote:
| I guess Go isn't killing Python, hunh.
| dlor wrote:
| All the overthinking on motivations here is entertaining :)
|
| Disclosure: I'm the Googler that got this funded. The process was
| roughly:
|
| - We have some extra budget at the end of the year! What are some
| ways we can spend this to get results while giving back to OSS?
|
| - Hey PSF, do you have any ideas for what you could do with some
| funding?
|
| - Looks good to me!
|
| We're just getting started, but we're working on ways to make
| this all more sustainable, scalable, and less ad-hoc.
|
| If you have ideas here, please reach out! I'm dlorenc at google
| dot com, or join in the OpenSSF (openssf.org)! We discuss these
| topics and more in the Securing Critical Projects WG, info here:
| https://github.com/ossf/wg-securing-critical-projects/
| vlag10 wrote:
| You are at the wrong address. The PSF has nothing to do with
| Python core.
|
| The proper way is to hire devs with proven track record and let
| them work 100% on the project.
| dlor wrote:
| I think that's what's happening here - the PSF will be hiring
| someone to work 100% on core CPython for a year.
| yannoninator wrote:
| > Disclosure: I'm the Googler that got this funded.
|
| > - We have some extra budget at the end of the year! What are
| some ways we can spend this to get results while giving back to
| OSS?
|
| > - Hey PSF, do you have any ideas for what you could do with
| some funding?
|
| > - Looks good to me!
|
| Was this also the process with getting a board seat over at the
| Rust Foundation, and the Kotlin Foundation?
| oefrha wrote:
| Thank you. Google has been sponsoring PSF for at least a decade
| -- cleared mentioned in TFA -- without much fuss; now the
| sponsorship level is upgraded ($90k to $150k?) and all of a
| sudden there's an uproar about Google taking over, shutting
| down (???), adding telemetry (?????), blah blah. The conspiracy
| theorists suddenly come out of the woodwork, the driveby haters
| (who I doubt even has any interest in Python) predictably dish
| out a stream of low effort Google memes... What a tedious
| thread to read, which is unfortunately just one example of the
| not even recent quality down spiral in any thread related to
| any big corp, regardless of whether there's a shred of
| connection between the topic and what certain people are angry
| about.
|
| To be clear, I'm not another guy with no interest in Python
| just seizing the opportunity to complain. I care about Python
| deeply and have quite a few patches in core over the years.
|
| Edit: I probably got the sponsorship dollar amounts wrong. The
| point stands.
| typon wrote:
| With how Google behaves in other areas do you really fault
| people for being skeptical?
| tomrod wrote:
| Were it MS I'd be concerned. At least in my circles Google
| isn't known for this type of outcome.
|
| Can you add some color/explanation/examples for why you
| feel skepticism is warranted?
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| Actually MS has been relatively hands-off on Postgres,
| GitHub, Xamarin, etc. Of course they want to integrate it
| closely with Azure & their toolset. But I don't see them
| compromising any functionality or making things specific
| to MS tools.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Does Microsoft have a stake in Postgres? I'm not aware of
| that if so (not that it would make me stop using it,
| anyway.)
| dmitriid wrote:
| Here's Google's approach to web standards, for example: h
| ttps://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/1356125702513418249?s=
| 20
| enneff wrote:
| I do fault people for being mindlessly cynical. It clouds
| the discussion so much that it makes legitimate concerns
| harder to see. Spreading FUD about big corporations
| actually has the reverse effect; low effort criticism
| colours all criticism, making it easier to dismiss as
| paranoid whining.
| oefrha wrote:
| Skeptical of what exactly? They fattened their long term
| sponsorship check by what, a millionth of their revenue?
| Less? What changed meaningfully? Do these "skeptical"
| people contribute to or even follow Python development at
| all?
| dmos62 wrote:
| Google might have their interests aligned with the
| ecosystem in this case, which is nice, but don't pretend
| that they haven't otherwise lost the public's trust.
| gerash wrote:
| I'm sure you're the representative for the general
| public.
| oefrha wrote:
| And you don't need to drag that into every topic that
| happens to contain the trigger word. There are a thousand
| other more relevant threads for you to pile on, which is
| my point. Who's pretending?
|
| Stop opening every thread that contains your trigger word
| and ruin it for everyone else who's actually interested
| in an on-topic discussion.
| amelius wrote:
| > And you don't need to drag that into every topic that
| happens to contain the trigger word.
|
| It's quite a human characteristic to not welcome gifts
| from the right hand of someone who acts against their
| interests with their left hand.
|
| A company, however, seems to have no problems with this
| or similar situations.
|
| Don't blame the human.
| californical wrote:
| It definitely is relevant here. If Google starts adding
| anything bad to Python, I need to know.
|
| I'm not a Python dev myself, but I know how many programs
| use it. If Google found a way to add some sort of
| telemetry to some core Python functionality (pip maybe?),
| it's worthwhile for me to know to never install Python on
| my computer. Or at least not a newer version... or at
| least block Google's telemetry IPs
| detaro wrote:
| If your trust in the Python project is that low you
| should probably stop using it today.
| oefrha wrote:
| Thanks for at least being honest that you don't care
| about Python development.
| californical wrote:
| I do care about Python development -- my SO uses Python
| in her research -- I just protest anything that gives
| Google my data as a rule. It sounds like that's not the
| case here, but still worth verifying.
| kubanczyk wrote:
| No. I've actually just gone over last 30 days of comments
| of dmos62. Not a one referenced that trigger word.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Skeptical of what exactly? Well, from my corner of the IT
| world I see Google routinely do these things:
|
| - Google's involvement in web "standards" [1]
|
| - Google sabotaging Mozilla [2]
|
| To quote from [2]:
|
| --- start quote ---
|
| At the individual level, their engineers cared about most
| of the same things we did... But Google as a whole is
| very different than individual googlers.
|
| ...
|
| The question is not whether individual sidewalk labs
| people have pure motives. I know some of them... They're
| great people. But focus on the behaviour of the organism
| as a whole. At the macro level, google/alphabet is very
| intentional.
|
| --- end quote ---
|
| Google today is what Microsoft of yesteryear couldn't
| imagine in it's top management's wettest dreams.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/dmitriid/status/13561257025134182
| 49?s=20
|
| [2] https://archive.is/tgIH9
| t-writescode wrote:
| In the context of current events?
|
| Microsoft and Ubuntu were recently exposed to have teamed
| up and shared contact information of their users with one
| another to create LinkedIn leads.
|
| The Raspberry Pi team recently added VSCode's repository
| endpoint as a required add-on to the most popular OS on
| it because ... he felt like it, but it exposes new and
| upgrading Pi users to Microsoft telemetry, sooo
|
| There is reason for concern given current events.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Just so there is a community record of the unrelated
| Raspberry Pi incident:
|
| A. It wasn't arbitrary. One of the goals of the Raspberry
| Pi foundation is access to computing and learning. To
| facilitate that they added this repository to make it
| seamless to install Visual Studio Code which as of the
| time of this writing is one of the most popular code
| editors and often one that is recommended to beginners
|
| B) despite reports to the contrary, not a single system
| package was added, this specifically is aimed at making
| VS Code installs easier[0]
|
| Again concern across the board is okay and things deserve
| scrutiny, but evidence needs to be provided when making
| these assertions. I'm no apologist, MS had done some
| deplorable things, this (and to the extend they were even
| involved is questionable entirely) is not one of them
|
| [0]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/raspberry-
| pi-os-adde...
| vtadder wrote:
| How often have I seen innocent statements postfixed with
| smileys in open source projects?
|
| "Don't worry, we only want a little bit of X."
|
| Fast forward a couple of years, and the innocent group suddenly
| owns the mailing lists, the infrastructure, director seats, the
| chief ideologue position and subjugates the core developers who
| want to get hired by the innocent people.
| amelius wrote:
| I dunno but perhaps it was better to spend the money on human
| support staff. Or on means to become less dependent on
| advertising income. Or on open-sourcing those "shut-down by
| Google" projects. Or on improving the sandbox/permissions
| system of Android.
|
| But I suppose that the corporate culture dictates that you
| don't discuss most of these topics with management.
| throwaway19937 wrote:
| > I dunno but perhaps it was better to spend the money on
| human support staff. Or on means to become less dependent on
| advertising income. Or on open-sourcing those "shut-down by
| Google" projects. Or on improving the sandbox/permissions
| system of Android.
|
| I certainly have my complaints about Google but this post is
| way off base.
|
| Whether Google pursues any of these possibilities has nothing
| to do with this sponsorship; they would all be in separate
| budgets.
|
| It's also highly unlikely that the grandparent has any input
| on these topics - how much influence do you have over your
| employer's strategic decisions? It's absurd to chastise
| someone in a large organization for decisions they almost
| certainly had nothing to do with.
|
| > But I suppose that the corporate culture dictates that you
| don't discuss most of these topics with management.
|
| Questioning strategic decisions is rarely beneficial to your
| career in any organization. I have yet to see anyone promoted
| for doing so but can think of at least 5 firings related to
| this.
| amelius wrote:
| > Questioning strategic decisions is rarely beneficial to
| your career in any organization.
|
| So, you always make the more "convenient" decisions instead
| and pretend there aren't any problems?
|
| If this is the result of company culture then this is
| indeed not the individual's fault, but I sure hope I can at
| least comment on it?
| Jyaif wrote:
| Suggestion: To avoid the bad publicity, never be the largest
| donator.
| dlor wrote:
| Hah - probably accurate! Someone has to do it though, and I
| don't mind.
|
| One of my goals here is to normalize big companies giving
| back like this. Even with budget and supportive leadership,
| spending money on OSS is surprisingly difficult.
| antman wrote:
| Thanks for the sponsorship! A nice next step would be to make a
| python a first class citizen on Android. After a series of
| freedoms in permission management have been revoked in the
| recent years Python has been effectively rendered useless on
| Android.
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| Always critics to everything and Google has grown big enough to
| be fun to hate. There's plenty of things to criticize what
| happens at your organization these days -- but this isn't one
| of them. Congrats
| olau wrote:
| It would be kind of cool if you could fund this guy mentioned
| below:
|
| https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-dev@python.org/...
|
| I understand if it's too specific. But it would still be neat
| to see if someone could get the ball rolling. I think it would
| give some good publicity too. :)
| [deleted]
| smitty1e wrote:
| Terry Jones, personifying GvR's brainchild, sits alone.
|
| Eric Idle, representing Google, lights far too close to him and
| begins: "Does your wife Go? Is she a Goer?"[1]
|
| (This is, after all, Python thread, no?)
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_Nudge
| cyberpsybin wrote:
| Python to be discontinued in 3 years. RIP.
| a-query-unknown wrote:
| Sure took them long enough.
| dontchooseanick wrote:
| Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
| DSingularity wrote:
| Is that even a feasible strategy for languages? I mean I get it
| for APIs... but we are talking about a language.
| pansa2 wrote:
| Visual J++?
|
| > _Some observers have remarked that this incompatibility
| appears to have been a deliberate aim of Microsoft 's, in an
| attempt to at least slow the advance of Sun's Java
| technology._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_J%2B%2B
| ppseafield wrote:
| But Microsoft got sued and lost hard on that one. They
| created C# and .Net as competition, but they hardly
| extinguished Java.
| santoshalper wrote:
| That failed spectacularly.
| doof_warrior wrote:
| Of course. The more they break Python compatibility, the more
| reasons new projects have to use the nearest competitor..
| which is Go.
| enjeyw wrote:
| I would have thought the nearest competitor to Python was
| Ruby, JS or Julia, depending on the application.
| Google234 wrote:
| Hopefully Google can push the foundation to stop adding bad
| complicated language features like pattern matching or the walrus
| operator to the language.
| vletal wrote:
| Well, the is still C and other languages if you do not like
| complicated high level features.
| Google234 wrote:
| Um, C has complicate low level features. Not sure how that is
| better.
| josefx wrote:
| You might be looking at the wrong language for that. Can I
| interest you in some Java instead? Do you want it to Go?
| pansa2 wrote:
| > _You might be looking at the wrong language for that._
|
| You're right, Python is not a simple language at all. Yet
| that's how it's widely perceived - I'm not sure why.
| superbcarrot wrote:
| Because it's easy to get started with and the complexity
| that you're exposed to increases with your experience and
| technical needs instead of being frontloaded. This isn't
| the same as being simple but it's understandable how the
| two can be confused.
| _tom_ wrote:
| Perhaps because it's relatively easy to get started?
| eznzt wrote:
| Because it was simple for a long time, then it became very
| popular and you have to listen to the idiots.
| [deleted]
| olau wrote:
| Thanks, Google!
| jdorfman wrote:
| This sets a great example for other cloud providers to emulate.
| I'm really proud of Ewa Jodlowska (PSF Executive Director) and
| her team for making this happen for the Python community.
| pansa2 wrote:
| > _The Python Steering Council and Python Software Foundation
| will work together to contract a developer_
|
| This would represent a significant increase in the number of
| people paid to work on the Python language. Two years ago it was
| estimated that it only had (the equivalent of) two full-time
| employees working on it.
|
| https://discuss.python.org/t/official-list-of-core-developer...
| josephg wrote:
| Its such a statement about the free rider problem that python
| can have only 2 people working fulltime on it. Python is one of
| the most popular languages in the world - there's got to be
| trillions of dollars worth of companies depending on it. Small
| improvements to the language would result in millions of
| dollars of productivity gains in aggregate globally.
|
| And yet ... collectively we can only find enough money to pay
| two full time salaries?! Seriously?
| edwardwatson wrote:
| Python is as popular as it is because it's free, not because
| it's good. If companies had to contribute, many would pick
| something else.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Its such a statement about the free rider problem that
| python can have only 2 people working fulltime on it_
|
| It's also a big statement about how non realistic were the
| ideas that FOSS will thrive on volunteers working together.
|
| Back in the day where the "Cathredral and the Bazaar" was
| published, VALinux got its IPO, and FOSS was the latest hype,
| people really believed that this will work without corporate
| sponsorship, just by volunteers doing the work.
|
| Then again, they also believed in many eyes available through
| the magic of FOSS making bugs shallow (Torvalds), and you get
| 20+ years of some obvious bug in something as critical as
| OpenSSL.
| kortilla wrote:
| > And yet ... collectively we can only find enough money to
| pay two full time salaries?! Seriously?
|
| But what's the problem here? Is python struggling as a
| language? If there were clear calls for help companies could
| find it a lot easier to justify donating money or dev time.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Is python struggling as a language?_
|
| As a language, interpreter, runtime, yes. In terms of
| adoption, no.
| andi999 wrote:
| I am seriously wondering: is it actually possible for stock
| listed companies to donate? I mean aren't they legally
| obliged not to spend more than necessary (towards their
| stockholders obliged). Also what does the IRS say on that?
| foota wrote:
| No. This is a misinterpretation of the responsibility.
| Companies have great latitude in what they do, as long as
| they're forthright.
| OJFord wrote:
| They have a duty to try to operate efficiently, but that
| doesn't make corporate social responsibility, a bad hire,
| or wasting something nobody liked in the canteen _illegal_.
| andi999 wrote:
| Well, bad hire, bad food can always be justified
| (avoiding hindsight fallacy). But giving away money for
| nothing received (meaning of donation) is something
| different (at least to me)
| keeganpoppen wrote:
| companies donate money to stuff all the time what are you
| on about?
| andi999 wrote:
| So I read up a little. To tax deduct the nonprofit must
| have registered as 501(c)(3). Is this the case here?
| sokoloff wrote:
| I can pay you to put my company name on your business
| website or a physical banner at a trade show and account
| for this as a business expense (deduct it) without you
| being a non-profit. I have broad latitude to make
| business expenditures in a manner that I believe is
| profit-seeking or optimizing for my business.
|
| People do this with Google and Facebook all the time. We
| call them ads. Not every ad campaign has a positive RoI.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yes, its possible, and, yes, they actually do. And the IRS
| is fine with it.
| tasubotadas wrote:
| So... why don't you pay?
| feanaro wrote:
| Why do you assume he isn't paying? The payment should
| obviously be proportional, though. You can't expect a
| single individual to finance what a gigantic multibillion
| corporation could.
| tasubotadas wrote:
| Just because some random individual came up with some
| arbitratry agenda of whom should finance what, doesn't
| mean that it makes sense.
|
| There are so many better (and worse) things to finance
| than Python Foundation.
| feanaro wrote:
| It's not very arbitrary. The reasoning (in one of the
| upstream posts) is that Python is one of the world's most
| used programming languages. It definitely makes sense for
| large multi-billion corporations which are the users of
| this language to help finance it.
|
| Your point would make more sense if the claim was that a
| significant portion of the corporation's profits should
| go towards financing Python. Then I would agree that
| "there are so many better things to finance than Python".
| But if we're discussing a salary or two in the context of
| corporations that employ hundreds of thousands of people,
| then your argument makes much less sense in the current
| context. There are very few things that would have better
| marginal utility then paying for the (effectively) third
| full-time Python developer.
| josephg wrote:
| I say this as someone who's spent _decades_ of my life
| donating time to opensource projects. - But the model where
| big companies have their technology stacks underpinned by
| charity is ridiculous. Obviously ridiculous, if python only
| has 2 full-time-equivalent staff.
|
| This problem isn't solved by little old me pulling out my
| check book. My bank and my insurance company don't need
| charity from me in order to fund the technology they've
| built their businesses on. They need to learn to pony up
| and start funding the "free" software they use. Paying
| myself would only help kick the can down the road - and
| encourage and enable this sort of corporate mooching to
| keep happening.
|
| In 60 years most of the volunteer maintainers of the
| software we depend on every day will be dead. Some time
| between now and then we need solution to this problem of
| opensource sustainability. Delaying buys us nothing.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If python continues to be this popular, there will be
| more maintainers who join the project.
|
| Surely you've seen volunteers join existing projects out
| of their own interest and need now. The decades that you
| contributed (thank you, BTW): were those all on projects
| you started, or did you also join some existing efforts?
|
| I don't see any reason to think that will stop in 10, 20,
| or 60 years.
| josephg wrote:
| > If python continues to be this popular, there will be
| more maintainers who join the project.
|
| Will there? I feel like most of the opensource attention
| flows gradually up stack / toward trendy things on github
| and away from infrastructure older than github. When
| heartbleed happened a few years ago it was revealed that
| OpenSSL was maintained by basically one guy. The same is
| true of the linux timezone database. Apparently python is
| mostly 2 people.
|
| I'd put money on this being is a theme for lots of tools
| we take for granted. How many people work on bash? Or
| busybox, grub, libpthread or libicu? I bet the number is
| tiny.
| some_anon_dude wrote:
| > the model where big companies have their technology
| stacks underpinned by charity is ridiculous
|
| Worse: they are exploiting people's good intentions.
|
| They co-opted the Free Software movement.
|
| Copyleft has been painted as "business-unfriendly" and
| replaced with permissive licenses - aka unpaid labor
| without "strings attached".
|
| > They need to learn to pony up and start funding the
| "free" software they use
|
| ...instead they even dodge taxes.
| bzb6 wrote:
| Someone else should!
| passtheglass wrote:
| To me that is more like evidence of a well-engineered
| codebase.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| because software that is provided for free cannot capture the
| positive externalities it creates and thus is under-supplied,
| it's just very straight-forward economics.
|
| Yet it's become such a widespread sentiment to expect
| software for free that charging for something like Python
| would probably be seen as obscene and kill the language
| through loss of reputation alone.
| II2II wrote:
| Is that actually a bad thing?
|
| Much of the popularity of Python is based upon third party
| libraries that have been contributed by both individuals and
| organizations. These are still contributions, and there are
| many cases where the contributors are paid.
|
| Should Python receive more funding and pay more people to
| work on the language? Probably, yet it is doubtful that
| having a large team working on the core language will improve
| the health of the language.
| _tom_ wrote:
| And large improvements to the language could result in
| millions of dollars of productivity losses! :-)
|
| I'm not a big fan of "Now this language has gotten popular,
| let's add all the features to it that made our other language
| so unpopular."
| huffmsa wrote:
| It taking 10 years to transition from 2 to 3 wasn't
| necessarily a bad thing.
|
| Definitely concerns that more hands could make another
| Angular, which had 2 incompatible branches, with one going
| from v2 to v11 in 5 years.
| josephg wrote:
| > It taking 10 years to transition from 2 to 3 wasn't
| necessarily a bad thing.
|
| The python3 interpreter could have been largely (or
| completely) source-compatible with python2 code. They
| could have done it rust2018 style - where source code
| files can opt in to a newer parser, and in return get
| access to the new features. Then the whole python3 drama
| would have been avoided. MacOS still ships with a python
| 2.7 interpreter because of all that nonsense.
|
| But if they only had 2 full-time people working on it, no
| wonder they didn't have the man power to do the
| transition any other way.
|
| Disappointing.
| my123 wrote:
| Which puts a:
|
| > WARNING: Python 2.7 is not recommended.
|
| > This version is included in macOS for compatibility
| with legacy software.
|
| > Future versions of macOS will not include Python 2.7.
|
| > Instead, it is recommended that you transition to using
| 'python3' from within Terminal.
|
| banner on launch nowadays...
| josephg wrote:
| Right; none of this should be necessary. I don't need an
| old version of my C compiler in order to compile old C
| files. Rust made breaking changes to their language and
| yet a modern rust compiler will happily compile the older
| 2015 rust syntax. Python could have gone down the same
| road; but I suppose all of python's corporate users chose
| to fight python compatibility changes locally rather than
| donate time / money fixing python itself.
| rtpg wrote:
| Everything about language maintenance isn't "just" adding
| features. There's actual bug fixes and a bunch of other
| stuff that take a lot of time. Not to mention that Python's
| standard library is relatively large.
| roenxi wrote:
| All the evidence is 2 Full Time Developers are equal to
| the workload. People aren't using Python because it is
| going to be good enough in the future, it is good enough
| now.
|
| If more people are working on it full time, we'll just
| get more Walrus Operators. A very hypothetical gain at
| cost of an increasingly complex core language.
| more-coffee wrote:
| I always have been and always will be against the walrus
| operator. I don't care how much anyone tries me to sell
| it on its elegance. There's just no _need_. It's already
| the #1 example of wtfpython
| https://github.com/satwikkansal/wtfpython#-first-things-
| firs...
|
| /rant. Those kind of features are going to keep coming
| anyway, I'm afraid.
| coldtea wrote:
| It's the #1 example of wtfpython for no good reason.
|
| It's like someone used to PHP or JS style coercion,
| doing: 1 + "2", getting a type error and asking "wtf
| python?".
|
| The walrus operator is obvious, and very handy in many
| cases.
|
| The capture part of the pattern matching PEP, on the
| other hand, has been designed shodilly.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| I don't like the walrus operator personally, but
| wtfpython has it wrong. It's simply syntax for an
| expression that includes a binding. It parses like any
| other expression, and is completely unsurprising.
| dash2 wrote:
| Improvements [?] new features.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| It's not about going million miles an hour. The safe speed
| can be used even if there's 200 people. But the commenter
| above has a good point: tons of businesses and billions are
| linked to a product with almost no workforce behind it. The
| same is with many other OSS: tons of value and no money to
| those who maintain/create.
| visarga wrote:
| If we want to solve this problem we need to start with a
| way to assign credit and identify neglected parts of the
| stack. After we have awareness we can find the funds.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Not necessarily. One can be done without another,but it
| would obviously help if there's some roadmap that can
| then be shown to the potential sponsors. Getting funding
| is ultimately a sales function and I'm sure any
| meaningful project would have enough dough to run on if
| such function would exist.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| That's insane. A thought occured recently - some lines of code
| in the python code base have been executed an innumerable
| number of times (trillion-trillion? Can't even start to
| calculate the order of magnitude). Even the subtlest of
| optimizations to these lines could collectively save probably
| hundreds or thousands of tons of CO2 from being released. That
| alone might deserve a couple of People looking into such
| massively common codebases fulltime.
| Radim wrote:
| And yet... Did you know about this (serious) proposal to make
| CPython 5x faster?
|
| https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-
| dev@python.org/...
|
| Needed funding though.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| The author claims to have _existing code_ for the first
| stage, but provides no code and no benchmarks in the post
| or linked github repo. Additionally, the repository does
| not seem to make a particularly strong case that each
| improvement will result in the massive 50% speedup compared
| to the previous as claimed.
|
| I'm not in the python community, so it's possible this
| person is well known and respected enough that part of this
| can be taken on faith. However, because the author does not
| provide benchmarks or any other proof of the effectiveness
| of the supposedly almost complete stage 1, I cannot
| personally call this proposal serious.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > The author claims to have _existing code_ for the first
| stage, but provides no code and no benchmarks in the post
| or linked github repo.
|
| Since he was only asking for payment once he hit his
| benchmarks for each stage, why does it matter?
| olau wrote:
| If you actually read the thread, it is evident that the
| author is in fact well-known and has worked on this for
| many years.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| I decided to read the entire thread, and my final
| conclusion remains roughly the same. Although "not
| serious" is perhaps too harsh, the author does not
| provide the level of detail I'd expect of someone asking
| for 250 thousand dollars for their existing work (as well
| as 750k for future work).
|
| The most information we got was "on a few simple
| benchmarks I'm seeing about a 70% speedup vs master for
| both default and LTO configures." However, this
| information is almost completely useless. What
| benchmarks? What architectures? What hardware?
|
| It would take the author 5 minutes of their time to say
| "here's the benchmark code I ran, it executed in [time]
| on CPython master commit [hash], and [lower time] on my
| patch, running on a machine with [hardware]." To be
| completely honest, I fail to see why they are not
| providing this information that would make their proposal
| significantly stronger.
| jensus wrote:
| difficult to get this through without going through the
| established channels and dealing with the politics straight
| on
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| Very interesting thread!
| tpetry wrote:
| Why does this not happen or anything like this?
|
| Ruby got MJT in a big effort to make Ruby a lot faster. PHP
| is constantly increasing it's performance and tries to
| change a lot to get faster (basic building blocks for JIT
| in PHP8).
|
| Why is python not iterating so much on it's performance? Or
| is it doing this but it's not as public in promoting it
| like my former two examples.
| dmurray wrote:
| There's already PyPy. It's faster for, I estimate, 90% of
| workloads that don't use NumPy or Tensorflow, which
| offload work to faster implementations in different ways.
| It can certainly be 5 times faster.
|
| It doesn't have that much adoption, which suggests that
| performance isn't critical to Python's user base. If PyPy
| got significant market share, perhaps the CPython
| developers would prioritise an approach like this. (Or
| perhaps they'd have even more justification to say look,
| there's already a performance-focused implementation,
| we'll do our thing).
| tpetry wrote:
| Pypy isnt used that much because you may run into
| problems. And nobody wants to research strange runtime
| errors in production.
|
| But the speed improvements would be welcome if they were
| in cpython because you can be quite sure there will be no
| problems.
| olau wrote:
| Agreed (and I like pypy)
|
| One example is that Pypy switched away from reference-
| counting to fully garbage collected. They are probably
| right that's faster, but if I'm running a webserver, it's
| actually really comforting to know that any garbage
| produced by the processing of a request is collected when
| that request ends (barring cycles of course) so I don't
| end up with weird hangups.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Using a GC doesn't preclude doing a correct use of
| ResourceManager.
| [deleted]
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| That's a pretty distorted view IMHO. There are a lot of people
| that are working in the Python ecosystem and improve the
| language, and while they are not directly paid by the PSF their
| employers give them time to devote to working on Python. I
| think e.g. GvR had plenty of freedom to work on his Python
| projects while at Dropbox. I know a lot of companies in Germany
| that give people ample time to go to Python conferences and
| engage with the community, as it's also a way to meet and
| recruit good Python developers.
|
| So it might be true that there are only a few FTEs working on
| Python, but the larger community of people contributing to it
| is much larger.
| pansa2 wrote:
| > _GvR had plenty of freedom to work on his Python projects
| while at Dropbox._
|
| That post was made while Guido was at Dropbox, and it claims
| he had one day a week?
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| They talk about maintaining Python, which includes things
| like preparing and managing releases. Why would you need
| more than a few people to do that? The core language itself
| also evolves at a slow pace (which is good), it's not that
| there are tons of new features every year that get merged
| into the codebase, so a few FTEs is probably adequate to
| handle that kind of work.
|
| Considering the larger Python ecosystem the community does
| a lot of the work, so saying there are only two people
| working full-time on Python is quite misleading IMHO, as
| Python has probably one of the largest communities in the
| world for a programming language, the Github repo alone
| lists almost 1.500 contributors.
| vnparker wrote:
| And these caused a lot of disagreement in the core team. Many
| thought that they were introducing too much churn.
|
| Coupled with the fact that _they get paid_ for the alleged
| churn and others have to catch up on unpaid time, this can ruin
| a project.
|
| The Python dev community has certainly gotten far less vibrant
| (and productive) in the last decade due to stifling corporate
| influence.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Two years ago it was estimated that it only had (the
| equivalent of) two full-time employees working on it.
|
| The discussion thread on that reveals that it was a bit low
| even by its explicit premise (core devs that had allocated time
| for OSS that was used for Python), and that methodology itself
| undercounted reality because it ignored people who had and made
| use of employer permission to use paid time but did not have a
| set allocation.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Only two people working full-time on python is not the same as
| "(the equivalent of) two full-time employees".
|
| One is two people. The other is a few thousand person-hours of
| effort per year.
| pansa2 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean. How is "two people working full-
| time" not equivalent to "two full-time employees"?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Two people working full time on Python have two names.
|
| The equivalent of two full time employees could be 10
| people with 20% of their time. I suspect there are a lot of
| patches submitted to python that were developed by someone
| being paid while they did the work that isn't accounted for
| in the 1 actual full-time plus 5 20% time people.
|
| IOW, paying for 1 additional named person to work ~2000
| hours in 2021 will almost surely not be a net increase of
| 50% of capacity.
| corruptedX wrote:
| Finally. After so long.
| pm90 wrote:
| More money for OSS is always great. Does the PSF employ full time
| engineers to work on Python? For some reason my mental model of
| core Python contributors was that they worked at a company which
| paid them to work mostly on the language, but also on other
| company specific things. Maybe because that's how Golang seems to
| work? IDK, genuinely curious.
| pansa2 wrote:
| Don't know why this is downvoted.
|
| AFAIK most core developers spend, at most, 20% of their paid
| time on the language / 80% on other things, not (as you might
| think) 80% / 20%.
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