On 5/18/07, Jeff Rush <jeff@taupro.com> wrote:

Time is short and I'm still looking for answers to some questions about
cPython, so that it makes a good showing in the Forrester survey.

1) How is the project governed?  How does the community make decisions
   on what goes into a release?

   You know, I've been a member of the Python community for many years
   -- I know about PEPs, Guido as BDFL, and +1/-1.  But I've never
   figured out exactly how -final- decisions are made on what goes
   into a release.  I've never needed to, until now.  Can someone
   explain in one paragraph?

Concensus is reached on python-dev or Guido says so. =)

Honestly someone proposes an idea to python-dev. It gets discussed. Either a concensus is reached and the person goes ahead and moves forward with it, or Guido explicitly says OK. Occasionally there is a minor revolt and Guido backs down, but usually that leads to the wrong decision winning out. =)

How much extra work is needed to present to python-dev depends on the level of the change. PEP is needed for language changes. New additions to the stdlib require community concensus that it is best-of-breed. Small additions usually should get python-dev approval. Patches for fixes just happen.

More details are in http://www.python.org/dev/intro .

2) Does the language have a formal defined release plan?

   I know Zope 3's release plan, every six months, but not that of
   Python.  Is there a requirement to push a release out the door
   every N months, as some projects do, or is each release
   separately negotiated with developers around a planned set
   of features?

Latter. We aim for every 12 - 18 months, but it depends on if there are any specific features we want in a release.

3) Some crude idea of how many new major and minor features were
   added in the last release?  Yes, I know this is difficult -- the
   idea it so get some measure of the evolution/stability of cPython
   re features.  Jython and IronPython are probably changing rapidly
   -- cPython, not such much.

Going by http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.5/highlights/ , roughly 8 or so major features. Don't know what to say about minor since I don't know how you want to count stdlib additions.

4) How many committers to the cPython core are there?

I don't have the necessary access to the pydotorg infrastructure
to answer this -- can someone who does help me out here?

According to http://www.ohloh.net/projects/26/analyses/latest/contributors , 92 people over the life of the project, but 51 over the last year.

-Brett