Python Development Team Moves to BeOpen.Com

Clyde Zellers writes: "The Python development team's leader, Guido Van Rossum, has just announced in an open letter that he is moving with his team to the Open Source startup, BeOpen.com. Guido and his team will now be devoting their full energies to Python developement and continuing with such innovative projects as Python 3000. "

Comments

I smell evil...

[funkwater]

Guido and his team will now be devoting their full energies to Python developement and continuing with such innovative projects as Python 3000

Looks like a Microsoft press statement to me. Keep your eye on these Python folks.

Re:A sad day indeed

[Rombuu]

but seriously, if Guido and his merry band of coders had put their blood sweat and tears into helping Perl just imagine where we would be today.

Whitespace sensitive PERL! Hooray!

Perl vs. Python

[Ted V]

Think of programming languages as a form of expression. Some languages make it easier to express certain types of ideas than others. I'm sure everyone here has heard of the "30 different words for snow" in eskimo. Russian has similar motifs for concepts like oppression, I believe.

Programming languages work like that too. Perl and Python are opposite sides of the same coin. The perl motto is "There's more than one way to do it." I don't know if Python has a motto, but it should be "There's a best way of doing it." Perl is designed for quickly digging in and doing work. Python is designed for "higher", more structured design. Why else do you think Python forces indentation? It's certainly not for Guido's comfort.

In other words, Perl is like vernacular english and Python is like high english. Both are useful in different ways and different contexts for expressing different ideas.

-Ted

Re:Perl vs. Python

[mattdm]

I think a better analogy is:

Perl is like English. It's got lots of words and concepts borrowed from other languages. Sometimes spellings are confusing and even irrational. There's irregularities everywhere you look. It's not particularly hard to learn the basics, but picking up all of the nuances takes real effort -- many people who use it daily are still confused by some of the grammar. It's also very flexible, and a favorite language of many for writing poetry.

Python is like Esperanto. It's designed from the beginning to make sense, and to be easy to learn. Spelling is phonetic, and "unnecessary complications" have been removed. It's still a fully-functional language in which any concept can be expressed -- being a planned language doesn't automatically make it Orwellian -- but there isn't the flexibility found elsewhere.

The Esperanto approach has its advantages, especially for programming. (Let's hope Python has more success in the real world!) In an alternate, more sensible universe, international documents are written in Esperanto. Likewise, it makes sense to design big collaborative projects in Python. On the other hand, I really enjoy the flexiblity and room for creativity provided by the English language -- and by Perl.

--

Re:anything to do with BeOS?

[LegacyMan]

Don't BeSilly

The Larger Trend

[LaNMaN2000]

It seems to be fairly common for authors of well-known utilities to either form their own start-ups or be absorbed into existing ones. If the ideology of OSS is to develop code "for the good of humanity," I am more than a little curious why Slashdot's absorbtion into Andover.net, L0pht's absorbtion into @stake, and now Python's absorbtion into BeFree has not spawned criticism. Since I view myself as somewhat of an outsider in relation to OSS, I see it as the natural evolution of OSS into the marketplace at large. In my mind, it legitimizes OSS more than it reflects on the founders' desire for material possessions.

How do you feel about OSS companies becoming part of for-profit ventures?

Re:The end for Python

[tuffy]

On the surface this looks good for Python, however with all that horsepower behind the dollars, I can't help but fear that the focus of the Python projects is goining to be tainted and rolled into just being a part of AboveNet or Metromedias product offerings as "exclusinve" and the Open Source beacon that Python was will come to an end.

That's certainly a valid concern, but the nature of an open source project will undoubtedly keep the language on track. If, as you suggest, it starts moving down an unpopular path, anyone can fork the language ("Monty 1.0!") into something people prefer to use. I doubt such a drastic step will ever be necessary, but we have the power to take it if we need to.

Re:Woohoo

[Devil's Avocado]

Call me a newbie/dork/lamer/whatever, but the sound of a programming language named after a potentially deadly snake is appealing to me.

Actually, Guido named Python after Monty Python's Flying Circus, which is infinitely cooler than naming it after a snake. You would know that if you weren't such a newbie/dork/lamer. (Just kidding!) Seriously, though, check out the language -- it rocks balls. It's like Perl without all that !@#$!@% shit.

Stupid question time: anybody know what Python 3000 is?

Python 3000 is the next major version of Python (although at least one more minor version is going to be released). It will be backwards incompatible and clear up many of the outstanding warts in Python's design. At this point it's not much more than a twinkle in Guido's eye.

-DA

Re:Woohoo

[Ed Avis]

Does anybody realize just how dated this 'Python 3000' stuff is going to sound in a thousand years' time?

Re:What's so innovative about Python?

[otisg]

Interesting.
A couple of pretty big sites use Python big time.
Here are some:
www.google.com
www.egroups.com

Ultraseek (Infoseek's search engine for sale) is also written in Python.

Sounds big to me :)

.................................................. ........ .................................................. ....................

About Damn Time...

[Tildedot]

Harumph. It's been _years_ since the Python development team last sprung into action. Ever since Cleese and Idle took their poofter arses out of the mix, there's been less and less Python each and every year. Oh, I know what you're thinking: "Yes, it is spelled Python, but it's pronounced Throat-warbler Mangrove".

Poignantly, it is now time for the Penguin on your telly to explode...

Re:Whitespace-sensitive

[tuffy]

Python is whitespace-sensitive, but I think it's a misconception that this will cramp your style unecessarily. As long as you remain consistant, Python doesn't care if your blocks are indented 1 space or 10. There's still a lot of leeway for individuality.

As for the usefulness, a semi-consistant style makes reading other peoples' code easier and it means less characters onscreen (such as { and }) for marking the starts and stops of blocks - leaving more room for code.

It's not for everyone, I'll admit, but it didn't take me long before I'd forgotten about the indentation rules entirely. Now I don't even think about them unless someone reminds me.

Re:The end for Python

[advtech]

Tei'ehm Teuw,

Thank you for demonstrating your lack of synaptic activity to the group. BeOpen.com is not owned by AboveNet Communications, Inc., whom you paint as the next Evil Empire. BeOpen simply hosts servers with AboveNet, which is how I assume you came about this ridiculous and erroneous claim. In the future, I would encourage you to check your facts before emerging as offensively ignorant.

To set the record straight, BeOpen.com is a privately held company based in Santa Clara, CA. It is also worth noting that Red Hat's installer is based on Python, and BeOpen would hardly be served by making Python "exclusive", as you claim might be the case. I can personally assure you that any future releases of the Python software will be backed by our full and long-time commitment to the Open Source community.



Thanks.


Domenic R. Merenda
Director of Strategic Business Development
BeOpen.com

Re:Python 3000?

[jhylton]

The design stage for Python 3000 isn't exactly started at this point :-). Given that uncertainity, I do not expect that any changes introduced by Python 3000 will be so radical that you will need to re-learn Python programming. If you learn Python, you should not have any trouble adjusting to Python 3000.

There are good books and tutorials available for Python. The Python tutorial that comes with the documentation and books like Learning Python and The Quick Python Book are good places to start. They were written before Python 1.6, but there aren't too many changes; certainly not many that will affect teaching materials.

I don't know what will change in Python 3000, but I can tell you a little about what we hope to achieve. We would like to take the opportunity to fix some of the language's warts without being hamstrung by backwards compatibility. I think the language has few warts, though, so there should be few changes. Andrew Kuchling put together a list of language warts that captures the sort of thing we'd like to fix.

The internals of Python 3000 will change a lot, and the C API will surely be different. The internal changes are not going to cause a lot of monkey with the language definition.

Re:Whitespace-sensitive

[wrygrin]

Specifically, it prevents the inevitable discrepancies between braces and indentation that people accidentally do. This is unfortunate when the computer asseses structuring rigorously by the braces, while people tend to assess the structuring by the layout - the indentation. Sometimes it turns out to be syntactically correct, but not what the programmer *meant*. A nearly invisible bug.

The principle is that, whenver possible, computers should be made to do what's easiest for the person, and not vice-versa - and the indentation is easiest for the person to read. The layout manifests the programmer's intended structuring - for the programmer and and the computer.

As for not being able to do what you want - all python imposes is that separate lines at the same block level must have the same indentation, and increasing levels have greater indentation w.r.t. their containing blocks. (The amount of indentation is up to you, and can vary.) I would be surprised if this is contrary to the vast majority of seasoned programmers' personal styles. The only thing you have to lose is your braces (and you can use parens to force groups in expresions, besides) and semicolons (and you *can* use the semicolons, but why?).

Voila.

focus on simplicity

[jetson123]

What makes Python a great language is its simplicity, both at the level of implementation and at the level of the language.

What I hope to see for Python 3000 is mostly cleanups that weren't possible in earlier versions because of backwards incompatibility: a simpler, leaner implementation with a "nicer" interface to C++ code, lexical scoping rules, and a simple full garbage collector in place of reference counting. Moving the NumPy numerical array type into the core would also help with creating numerical extensions. But that's largely all I would like to see in the next major release of Python.

I'm not sure that the transition to BeOpen.com of the development effort is altogether a good thing. If this results in extra resources and they are focussed on enhancing Python, Python may become too complex and featureful; a number of other languages that started out like Python have gone down that road and become marginalized. Or Python may simply end up being a side-line for some other business, just like what seems to have happened with Scriptics and Tcl.

Python is Guido's baby, and it's his to decide where to take it. But I hope he'll keep these kinds of concerns in mind.

Re:The end for Python

[Tei'ehm Teuw]

Mr. Merenda,

Thank you first off for your candid and straightforward reply.

The information I posted was taken directly from your corporate web site under the investors section, where it outlines your primary investors. Over three quarters are executives of AboveNet communications which does happened to be a subsidiary of Metromedia.

I did not mean to imply that BeOpen.com is going to be , as you put it, "The next Evil Empire". After re-reading my initial post I can see how it could read that way and I apologize if I have insulted you or any other BeOpen associate. I for one have been a Python supporter for a long time and have appreciated all Python has done for the Open Source community.

That said, The statement that BeOpen simply hosts servers with AboveNet implies that is the extent of the BeOpen/AboveNet relationship, which I find to be misleading and also false. From public filings from the creation of BeOpen, it is quite apparent that the effort is VC based however subsidised by many of the exec's at AboveNet.

Now if you or the other associates of BeOpen are not aware of this, I feel for you in the fact that your owners and management have kept this from you.

My initial post was an attempt to illustrate that as in cases past, when big money VC's and investors "Partner", "Merge with", "Aquire", etc. Open Source firms, the firms have a huge fight when trying to hold on to the ideals and ethics of open source. My post was trying to outline my fear that this may happen to Python, now PythonLabs. It was not intended to be a flame targeted at Python or any of it's associates, only a thought that big money has a history of getting what it wants, regardless of what gets in its way. In this case Open Source ideals.

In closing I would like to thank you for your honest reply and also thank you for your commitment to the open source community for any future releases of the Python software.

Regards,
ttm

Re:Because BeOpen != VA Linux Systems.

[Bowie J. Poag]

What makes BeOpen superior to SourceForge? Easy. BeOpen is not affiliated with VA Linux Systems, of which we've already established has a near monopoly on resources when it comes to the Linux community. Looking past the "VA Linux Systems will screw you and your project raw if you let them" argument, the simple act of merely housing everything under one umbrella is dangerous. If VA Linux Systems goes straight into the crapper (seen their stock performance lately?) like the vast majority of other .com companies will, then they will take all the assets they own down with the ship, including the very page you're reading right now.

Diversity is a good thing for Linux. One company owning and running it all is not.

My $0.02,

Bowie J. Poag

A Response From BeOpen.com

[advtech]

BeOpen.com would like to thank the Slashdot community for generating such volume of conversation on the Python issue. Because some rumors have been flying around today, we would like to let the community know a little more about BeOpen.com as a company, as well as answers some of the questions that have been raised.

BeOpen.com is a venture-backed Silicon Valley start-up based in Santa Clara, CA. We are an application publishing company fully committed to Open Source and the community surrounding it.

We did, in fact, receive funding from individuals who were the founders and deal makers behind Exodus Communications and AboveNet. We are not, however, "owned" by AboveNet. We feel that having access to these successful and highly intelligent business professionals is an asset to our company.

BeOpen.com has acquired LinuxDEV.net, Geeks404.com, and GNULinux.com, providing content and community around these sites. We have also interviewed a number of Open Source luminaries on the BeOpen.com site, including Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation, Jordan Hubbard of FreeBSD, Inc., Matthias Kalle Dalheimer of the KDE Project, and Beau Vrolyk of SGI. As well, we have produced a number of documents relating to Linux and its usage, which inform and aid the community as a whole.

BeOpen.com has also been in contact with Richard Stallman concerning an equipment donation to the Free Software Foundation, one of our many community outreach programs.

The Core Python development team has joined BeOpen.com. We have signed an agreement with Guido and his team stating that we will always release our Python products as Open Source, ensuring that the community's rights are protected.

We continue to employ members of the community to produce content and develop software. We also support several projects on SourceForge, paying the salaries of the developers in charge of these endeavors.

We hope the community will recognize through our actions the strong commitment to giving back and promoting the Open Source and Linux movements that BeOpen.com has displayed and will continue to foster.

Thank you all for your interest in BeOpen.com and in Python. We look forward to working closely with the community to promote Open Source and Linux.


Domenic R. Merenda
Director of Strategic Business Development
BeOpen.com