<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>Dear User and Dev, </div><div><br></div><div>This morning I received an personal email from one of our user with the</div><div>following inside:</div><div><br></div><div>> I was wondering whether my involvement in the development […] make too much</div><div>> sense now, that IPython has received a grant for the next two years, […] it</div><div>> seems that there are going to be a number of people on the team, who are very</div><div>> proficient, […] and I wouldn't be able to contribute too much, anyway.</div><div><br></div><div>I realized, that even we got a lot a congratulation mails after the announce of the grant,</div><div>we didn't get any expression of concern or questions on what will happened, this was </div><div>a little less the case on hacker-news.</div><div><br></div><div>What's follow is my personal opinion, how I feel about the development of</div><div>IPython over the past Year. Because I feel it is important to tell that</div><div>being founded will not change how we work, will not change the people.</div><div><br></div><div>So as you may know, IPython did receive a Sloan Foundation Grant for the next</div><div>two years, that will help the development of IPython, But this does not mean we</div><div>will ever cut ourselves from our user bases. </div><div><br></div><div>First of all, being in the core development team does not necessarily mean we</div><div>will get any money from the grant. Some of the current core team dev will be</div><div>"hired" to work part or full time on IPython. Personally I won't, even if I were</div><div>paid for that it wouldn't change what I would be doing (just maybe my schedule).</div><div><br></div><div>This will not prevent me from fixing bug and bring improvement to IPython. Nor</div><div>will I assume that Devs that are paid from this grant have more obligation to</div><div>fix bugs or answer to question than I am.</div><div><br></div><div>Being a core dev does not mean that we are more capable than any other</div><div>user of the list. There is no official way to become a core dev, but</div><div>empirically, I would say that when you submit (or review) too many good pull </div><div>request we give you the responsibility to merge others'.</div><div><br></div><div>One of the things that make IPython so great is that we develop things that we</div><div>use, I do make patches for IPython because I feel the use for it in my work,</div><div>the diversity of people that contribute and use it make IPython what it is now :</div><div>If we look a the opened PR, we see that more than the half are opened by people</div><div>that are not in the core team, and *big* PR are in this big half.</div><div><br></div><div>You might be concern to not being able to keep up with something some</div><div>could do in minutes, and I guess this is the main concern most of you have. I</div><div>reassure you we will alway take time to guide you to make a PR. </div><div><br></div><div>I first contributed 1 Year ago, from an ~10 lines change that took me a week to</div><div>write, I had kind words from fperez, epatters, and minrk to explain me how to</div><div>do things they could have done in 10 minutes tops.</div><div><br></div><div>Now I do the same for every pull request from users. Even if fixing a bug would</div><div>take me less time than writing the explanation for an user, I still write the</div><div>explanation and help do the right thing even for one line. I do strongly</div><div>believe that this is worth doing in the long run. And I know that I am not the</div><div>only one that will keep up doing so as long as he can. Often the most difficult </div><div>thing is to know the code base, not actually writing the patch, and nothing but </div><div>time helps that.</div><div><br></div><div>Heck, the Sloan-Foundation almost exclusively give to project linked to</div><div>education, if we can't be good teacher, how could build a tool to help other to</div><div>teach ?</div><div><br></div><div>So yes I will continue to contribute, on my free time, I hope I'll find some</div><div>way to get more time to be involve. Yes the development will probably go</div><div>faster, and there are things I won't be able to follow, but even now, I already</div><div>discover that some stuff had been added to IPython during the week that I</div><div>wasn't aware of, and I'm convinced there are still room for all kind of</div><div>contribution, from QTconsole UI to big AST hook to do amazing stuff I don't</div><div>even dream of.</div><div><br></div><div>Hopping to have convince you that we will not change, and that you will continue to </div><div>bring us big surprises with awesome idea and PRs.</div><div><br></div><div>Thanks to all of you, also and especially to Fernando without whom IPython </div><div>would not exist today. </div><div><br></div><div>Sorry for the length, </div><div>-- </div><div>Matthias</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>[Grant announce on HN] <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4909070">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4909070</a></div><div>And a small link, also from hacker news to conclude :</div><div>[Dear Open Source Project Leader: Quit Being A Jerk] <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4921152">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4921152</a> </div></body></html>