Comments or Not? Public or Private? Relevant or Irrelevant?

Recently I heard that some people aren't happy about changes made to PyPi, the Python Package Index. As far as I am aware there is only one person who has been working on that application recently, and that's Martin von Loewis. Martin, last year's winner of the Frank Willison Award, is a Director of the PSF and someone who works tirelessly at various aspects of Python -- many of them not particularly rewarding. As with many open source activities it is (I assume) a labor of love.

Recently Martin updated the Package Index to allow users to leave comments, and it appears that this innovation has been contentious. As a result of the rumblings Martin created a poll to determine whether the feature should continue in its present form or be modified in various ways. Here are the results as at the time of this writing:

Allow ratings and comments on all packages (status quo)					223
Allow package owners to disallow comments (ratings unmodified)					137
Allow comments, but only send them to package owners (ratings unmodified)					33
Disallow comments (ratings unmodified)					24
Disallow ratings and comments (status three months ago)					88

This is all very well, but unfortunately it appears that PyPi is now boxed into a corner. Even if the most popular option is implemented (retaining the current situation, where the newly-added rating and comment feature is allowed on all packages) this guarantees that a majority of those voting will have their favored option rejected. I suppose this demonstrates that you can give people too many choices.

My own discomfort with PyPi goes rather deeper. While I think that it's great that we have a central repository to support setuptools (even though release 0.6 is now three years into its release cycle and onto its eleventh release candidate) and now distribute, I would like to see it become much more usable than it currently is. It would be easy to see this as an attack on the implementers and maintainers (which it is not intended to be: the maintainers of all the software I have mentioned have done valuable work that I could not). Honestly, it isn't.

In reality I think it would be good if they had more help. Particularly the kind of help that let them package the facilities this excellent tool PyPi provides, in a much more obvious way. Even if this means complaining about the way things currently are.

Almost as a side note, I ended up following a twisty little maze of (web) passages all alike which finally led me to the Python issue tracker. Since it showed an apparently remembered login name and password I assumed all I had to do was click the Login button and all would be well, but apparently not. So I did what any user would do, and followed the Lost your login? link.

Alas, neither my email address nor my user name was recognized on that page, so I decided the only thing I could do was to register an account (even though I know I have submitted bugs in the past). So I went through the registration process only to be presented with the following unhelpful message:


OK, so what the heck is all that about? How am I now supposed to proceed if by chance I have burning information about a bug in the Python system? I have said before, and I will say again, that as an interface between Python's users and its developers the issue tracker sucks. I am sure it is very useful for the developers, but as an input collection mechanism it seems to be only slightly less valuable than a customer service desk staffed only by a notice reading "go away" (I am exaggerating for dramatic effect here).

[Edit: this was apparently a bug, which has now been fixed at least for the Python bug tracker.]

I suspect that what is needed here is the e-mail equivalent of a help desk, where people with no knowledge of the infrastructure can exchange messages with a team of real human beings who know what the score is and can make any necessary inputs to the issue tracking system on their behalf. Call them user proxies, if you like. I am aware that in the high-tech world of open source this may be seen as a heresy, but people still have their uses, dammit, and they clamor to be useful even as the capitalist world declares them redundant by the hundreds of thousands.

Now I know before I post it that some people are not going to like this article: they will either say that I shouldn't be complaining if I'm not prepared to fix what I'm complaining about, or that I should not be making a noise about something that third parties will use as evidence that the Python world is in some sort of disarray. Frankly I don't buy either of those arguments.

The Python world has recently gone through a long-drawn-out and extremely energetic discussion about increasing the diversity of the community. As an existing community we are fighting an uphill battle, because it's even more difficult to change the constituency of existing communities than it is to recruit a diverse mix to new ones. Just the same this has had some very positive results, not least the publication of a diversity statement that I think the Python Software Foundation has every right to be proud of -- it might seem like a simple piece of text, but it was a hard-won development that even cost us the resignation of a member.

Yet despite all that work, we apparently haven't yet got to the stage where the Python community includes people who can look at a less-than-optimal interface and say out loud "we need to do something about this". I don't know if this is because we are too close to PyPi to be able to acknowledge its faults, or because people fear hostile responses if they make negative comments about the infrastructure, or (perhaps most likely) because they don't want to offend those who have invested their time and effort into producing something, at least, which is more than most of us do. I do know that it frustrates the hell out of me.

So let me put a public stake in the ground here. I have visited a number of local Python user groups in the past year (the first PSF chairman to do so, as far as I can tell). Almost everyone I have spoken to along the above lines has been enthusiastic about making things better, and willing to volunteer to help make the necessary improvements. So now I need to hear from the broader Python community about what's "wrong" (less pejoratively: what we should change to make things better). This means you.

The Python Software Foundation is currently looking quite critically at next year's activities and the budget to support those activities. If we are going to make a real difference to the perception of Python and to its adoption as a serious IT solution to a broad range of problems then we need broad involvement from the whole community, not just the PSF membership. I am investigating a number of ways in which the PSF could encourage a broader involvement, and it would be helpful at this point if there were general evidence of a desire by non-members to get more involved in Python: not just its development, but its community.

If this piece isn't enough to get a decent discussion going then I suppose I should just resign as PSF chairman and look elsewhere for a community that gives a damn. I honestly don't think that will be what I need to do. I'm really hoping you guys don't let me down here.

Apple's Cynical Approach

It turns out that for a long time now Apple iPhones have been lying to Exchange Server mail hosts, telling the mail servers that on-device encryption is supported. It now transpires that only the recently-added 3G S model supports encryption through hardware, and this came to light when a recent upgrade made the phones tell the truth.

The unfortunate consequence for any business that has standardized on iPhones for remote mail access is that if they have required on-device encryption the iPhone has been breaking their security guidelines since it was installed. According to Apple their only alternatives are to change their security policies to allow iPhones to store plain text emails or upgrade everyone to the new 3G S device.

What a crock. Not only that, the iPhone users apparently had to wait until after they'd been upgraded to even learn that this issue existed. I am so glad I'm not a corporate Apple user.

Snakebite.org Announced: Get Bitten by the Python Bug!

Things are looking up! I mentioned Trent Nelson's snakebite.org in my Python Magazine column a while ago, but at that point everything was still in stealth mode, so you couldn't get much information about what was going on from the web site.

That's all over now, because yesterday Trent mailed the python-dev list to announce the forthcoming availability of the network, which far from being "a couple of clunky old boxes off eBay" turns out to be the makings of a comprehensive distributed test and development network, with hardware and software contributions from major companies, that's going to be the envy of the open source world.

I know that Trent has larger plans for snakebite.org, but on behalf of the Python community I would like to thank him (and a cast of many others) not only for his munificence but also for the incredibly hard work that's been done to bring this project to fruition.

HOPping All Over the Place

Several regular Python bloggers have already noted the Google Highly Open Project (GHOP), which aims to introduce secondary school students to the open source world. The team managing the Python effort for the project have been pleasantly surprised by the competence of the student contributors, and they are just getting ready to add another batch of projects. If there's a project that you think would improve the Python ecology, take a look at the Python project page and get in touch with the organizers from there.

The project has just received an offer of hardware to help it along. This will broaden the scope of the activities, and the team has already started brainstorming about uses for the new kit.

So, the reason for this post is mostly to point out what an awesome job the guys who are organizing the project have been doing. Titus Brown took the lead and came up with a stupendous list of projects in extremely short order. He has been ably assisted by Andre Roberge, Doug Hellman and Georg Brandl pretty much right from the start, and an increasing number of others have joined in to suggest projects and review student submissions, offering guidance and generally helping things along.

Well done, all of you. The whole Python community owes you thanks for the amazing efforts you continue to make on their behalf on GHOP.

Python is Not a Religion

The title of this piece is a quote from a post by Doug Napoleone on the subject of Python advocacy. Another quote: "Advocating Python for the sole purpose of promotion is idiocy." I quite agree with that one too. I don't really understand quite why one of my blog entries is referenced as ironically hypocritical, but I suppose I can live with that.

Nor am I sure who Doug is referring to as those who feel there is no need for Python advocacy. I certainly can agree, though, that there is absolutely no need for religious wars when it comes to choice of programming language, and that the appropriate question to ask is "is Python a good way to solve my problems". Anyone who sees Python as the solution to all programming problems is perceiving the language as a hammer and the problems as nails. There are many things that Python is good at (and many more it could be good at if someone wrote the right applications), but it's no more a panacea than any other language.

Doug's blog post appears to be a call for enthusiasts ("passionate people" is what he calls them) to come to the aid of the language. The sad fact is that the majority of the users of any technology (or any religion, come to that) - even users who profit vastly from its adoption - much prefer to be passive consumers than advocates, and this is the way of the world. Passion is all very well, but ultimately it needs to be directed to a goal, and shouldn't the goal of Python advocacy be helping people to solve technical problems more effectively?

While passionate people will help, I think advocacy needs planning as well as passion, and it's only when the two go together that language advocacy really helps. Support for the existing community is important, but so is increasing awareness of Python outside that community. I'm not convinced that most community members have the stomach for that task. It remains to be seen whether Python users are the best advocates for the language, but rightly or wrongly the Advocacy Coordinator position is currently planned as follows:

• User groups how-to and content resources (40%)
• Web site content showcasing Python capabilities (40%)
• User group infrasructure support (5%)
• Reactive and proactive response to queries and support requests (15%)

I am sure that the Coordinator, Jeff Rush, would love to have passionate people knocking on his door and asking how they can help him. Then he would have more time for other efforts that the PSF has asked him to back-pedal on for the moment. Ask not what Python can do for you ...