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I think it's great this person is so dedicated to maintaining such an important part of the ecosystem, but is there seriously just one dude that's taking care o

I think it's great this person is so dedicated to maintaining such an important part of the ecosystem, but is there seriously just one dude that's taking care of this? If something happens to him, what happens to everything and everyone that depends on the index? Perhaps it's time to think about moving the responsibility to something more fault tollerant, like a non-profit organization -- maybe even python.org?

rtpg 10y ago
The thing is basically all major Python projects are volunteer based. I think even the PSF has no full-time staff. Django has 1 person working full time on it. It's so embarrassing, though honestly I'm doing nothing but complaining about it. While some might argue that it's OK for major frameworks to be like this because they're very stable already, the package manager is a big deal! Perhaps if someone ran private repos off the same tech for enterprises, and used some of the proceeds to pay somebody to maintain the underlying tech (CircleCI model, basically...)
- pwang 10y ago
  One of the reasons that we started Continuum Analytics was because we felt that the scipy/pydata ecosystem was so powerful and had such an important role to play in the tech landscape, that we could not purely rely on the goodwill contributions from open source hackers on nights & weekends. We wanted to create a sustainable business - and explore sustainable business models - that could embrace open source technology development, while paying actual salaries, and then push forward in important areas with real velocity. I think we're making good progress and doing great work, but one of the most surprising points of difficulty in this process has been the acrimonious FUD from the community itself. Various individuals seem to have a perspective that open source must only come from "unaligned" individuals, hacking away in poverty to the detriment of their finances and of their families, and that any "corporate" contribution must be treated with suspicion. The amount of FUD that we've had to deal with w.r.t conda, Anaconda, etc. is shocking and depressing. There are folks that seem to think it's necessary to fork an already BSD-licensed piece of code simply because it comes from a "corporation", but who are happy to code in Sublime Text on their Macbooks and push code into Github.com. It bothered me a lot more in the first few years, but I've gotten over it and have learned to just roll my eyes, and keep on keeping on. But for those who wonder why it is that such important open source efforts seem to run on fumes from volunteers (OpenSSL, anyone?), I want to make sure that they understand that it's the community itself that sometimes creates this kind of outcome. Open Source is sometimes a ghetto because certain insiders build walls of asceticism.

rtpg 10y ago

The thing is basically all major Python projects are volunteer based. I think even the PSF has no full-time staff. Django has 1 person working full time on it. It's so embarrassing, though honestly I'm doing nothing but complaining about it. While some might argue that it's OK for major frameworks to be like this because they're very stable already, the package manager is a big deal! Perhaps if someone ran private repos off the same tech for enterprises, and used some of the proceeds to pay somebody to maintain the underlying tech (CircleCI model, basically...)

pwang 10y ago
One of the reasons that we started Continuum Analytics was because we felt that the scipy/pydata ecosystem was so powerful and had such an important role to play in the tech landscape, that we could not purely rely on the goodwill contributions from open source hackers on nights & weekends. We wanted to create a sustainable business - and explore sustainable business models - that could embrace open source technology development, while paying actual salaries, and then push forward in important areas with real velocity. I think we're making good progress and doing great work, but one of the most surprising points of difficulty in this process has been the acrimonious FUD from the community itself. Various individuals seem to have a perspective that open source must only come from "unaligned" individuals, hacking away in poverty to the detriment of their finances and of their families, and that any "corporate" contribution must be treated with suspicion. The amount of FUD that we've had to deal with w.r.t conda, Anaconda, etc. is shocking and depressing. There are folks that seem to think it's necessary to fork an already BSD-licensed piece of code simply because it comes from a "corporation", but who are happy to code in Sublime Text on their Macbooks and push code into Github.com. It bothered me a lot more in the first few years, but I've gotten over it and have learned to just roll my eyes, and keep on keeping on. But for those who wonder why it is that such important open source efforts seem to run on fumes from volunteers (OpenSSL, anyone?), I want to make sure that they understand that it's the community itself that sometimes creates this kind of outcome. Open Source is sometimes a ghetto because certain insiders build walls of asceticism.