[Python-Dev] Re: Re: 2.4 news reaches interesting places

[Carlos Ribeiro]

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 17:10:58 +0100, Erik Heneryd <erik at heneryd.com> wrote:
> Fredrik Lundh wrote:
> >>>fwiw, IDG's Computer Sweden,  "sweden's leading IT-newspaper" has a
> >>>surprisingly big Python article in their most recent issue:
> >>>
> >>>    PYTHON FEELS WELL
> >>>    Better performance biggest news in 2.4
> >>>
> 
> >>>and briefly interviews swedish zope-developer Johan Carlsson and Python-
> >>>Ware co-founder Håkan Karlsson.
> >>
> 
> ...
> 
> >
> > so I don't think you can blame Johan or Håkan...  the writer simply read the
> > python.org material, and picked a couple of things that he found interesting
> > (decorators and generator expressions may be a big thing for an experienced
> > pythoneer, but they are probably a bit too obscure for a general audience...)
> 
> I'm a bit puzzled by the last paragraph, where Python is grouped
> together with PHP and Perl - names starting with p, being popular on
> Linux and not having big, commercial backers.  The article then
> concludes "Since Python is copyrighted, it's not truly open.  However,
> it can be freely used and redistributed, even commercially."
> 
> Huh?  Where did THAT come from?  You might argue the merits of Python
> being associated with Perl/PHP, but it's a fact that it is.  But when it
> is, it's seen as less free?

The author was probably referring to the old (and as AFAIK already
solved) CRNI copyright issue that ocurred into the 1.x to 2.x series
transition. It's amazing how old memes from Python keep being
remembered and repeated, even years after the fact. It also
illustrates something very important - the community is not doing a
good job at spreading the news; perhaps we talk too much between
ourselves, and too little with the outside market. IMHO the website is
a great part of this, its message being more important to "sell"
Python than the standard library or native .exes.

About the website, a note from my own experience: when I search for
documentation on Python, I'm usually directed to some of the mirror of
the main python.org site. To find it inside the main site, I have to
use "site:python.org", or even "site:docs.python.org". Usually Google
does a good job at ranking pages, and if it doesn't rank the main
Python website very highly, it's because they're not being referred
to. A campaign to ask people to put links back to the canonical
documentation at the Python website would be nice.

-- 
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com
mail: carribeiro at gmail.com
mail: carribeiro at yahoo.com