<div dir="ltr">I'm glad we're having this discussion. There are many gray areas,... some grayer than others, while some are obviously clear. There should be no change to anything open source. When you start adding in the commercial stuff that people pay for, that also has variance, and we've seen some of those in this thread so far. I have another...<div><br></div><div>I could give a talk about Google APIs at a future meeting if there was sufficient interest. Our <a href="https://github.com/google/google-api-python-client">APIs Client Library</a> is open source and available for multiple environments. Also, using our APIs are generally free too. (The only ones that cost money are the commercial versions of Google Maps, Analytics, and most of our Cloud Platform, but everything else is generally free, and it's pretty easy to do in/with Python.)</div><div><br></div><div>The most important thing to me, however, is that the talk is technical and given by an engineer, not a sales or product marketing person. Something that's purely commerical to use *and* given by someone in Sales or Product Management is too far I think, unless they're somehow sponsoring, i.e., providing the venue, food, etc. But I would at least hope that their API client is open source, if not the service.</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers,</div><div>--Wesley</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Mar 17, 2016 at 11:00 PM, Karen Dalton <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kd@karend.net" target="_blank">kd@karend.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
Short answer: I think the leadership should have latitude about what
would be useful and informative to the developers.<br>
<br>
TL;DR:<br>
I am not opposed to talk on software that has a cost associated with
it if that increases my technical knowledge. For example if a fake
company had a new product SuperDevelopmentX that had a python
component that made my (software development) life easier I would
want to know about it, and learn more about it. Or if a high
proportion of developers started to use the python SuperDevelopmentX
module/API/service/whatever I would appreciate the chance to see
what it could do so I could talk to the people above me why we
actually should or actually shouldn't look into incorporating it. In
my experience not all free software is good, and not all good
software is free (though I hope it all can be).<br>
<br>
I am happy to learn about open source projects and tools and I
operate professionally in that space currently. But in the real
world sometimes we, as developers, do have to use non-open source
software or systems or services through corporate obligations or
technical necessity.<br>
<br>
If the Baypiggies group decided to only hear about only open source
topics I would understand. But in the time I have left in the day to
learn about additional things in the current python-o-sphere, I
would also like to learn about all kinds of relevant topics that
will help me excel in my current work, and make me marketable should
I choose to go elsewhere. Which, I think, means embracing the
reality of learning about non-open source things some of the time.<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
-Karen</font></span><div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
<div>On 3/17/16 11:36 AM, Jeff Fischer
wrote:<br>
</div>
</div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div class="h5">
<div dir="ltr">Hi everyone,
<div> As you may know, I have been helping Glen with hosting the
BayPiggies talks this year. In planning the speakers for the
rest of the year, we ran into some questions about what kinds
of talks people want to see.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div> Since Python is part of a larger Open Source ecosystem,
most talks focus on how to use various Python-based open
source libraries to achieve something useful. For example,
Dan's talk last month incorporated NumPy, Pandas, and
Scikit-learn. Other talks may be about commercial products
built around an Open Source offering (e.g. a past talk on <a href="https://www.ansible.com/" target="_blank">Ansible</a> and an
upcoming talk on <a href="http://rockstor.com/" target="_blank">RockStor</a>).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>So, what about purely commercial offerings? If you have to
pay to use an API, are you still interested? What about APIs
to pay-to-use web services (say, the Boto API to Amazon's Web
Services)? Should we focus on Open Source or cast our net
wider? Where should we draw the line? Does it depend on the
specific topic or speaker? Whether the API is available to
individuals or just corporations?<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Personally, I am somewhat conflicted: I think we should
welcome all kinds of speakers, but I would not want to see us
degenerate into another meetup that is just pitches from
Product Managers.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Your thoughts on this are much appreciated! I am writing
this with a specific situation in mind, but I would like to
establish some more general guidelines.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Thanks,</div>
<div>Jeff</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset></fieldset>
<br>
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