PythonLabs Team Moves to ActiveState

[Carlos Alberto Reis Ribeiro]

It's 2 hours before April Fool's Day here (?!?!?)

At 19:54 31/03/01 -0500, Guido van Rossum wrote:
>PythonLabs Team Moves to ActiveState
>
>To all Python users and developers:
>
>    Less than half a year ago, I moved with my team to Digital Crations, 
> in the
>    hope of finding a new permanent home for Python development. At
>    Digital Creations we've done several good things for Python, such as 
> forming
>    the Python Software Foundation and the management of the Python 2.1 
> release.
>
>    Unfortunately, Digital Creations's original plans for PythonLabs didn't
>    work out as hoped, and we weren't able to reach mutual agreement on
>    workable alternative plans - despite trying for months.
>
>    I am proud to have found a new home for my entire team: starting
>    today, Tim Peters, Barry Warsaw, Jeremy Hylton, Fred Drake and myself
>    are working for ActiveState. We will be spending part of our
>    time on core Python development (including Jython and Mailman) and
>    part of our time on Python infrastructure improvements that also
>    benefit ActiveState's efforts such as Komodo and Python.NET.
>
>    Python will remain Open Source; ActiveState has no desire to
>    monetize or brand the Python language or specific Python
>    distributions. All future work we do on Python as ActiveState
>    employees will be owned by the PSF.
>
>    We're excited to be working for ActiveState: they are one of the companies
>    most committed to Python, and they have great products! Plus, we know
>    they have deep financial backing. We trust that ActiveState will
>    provide a stable home for Python for many years.
>
>    ActiveState has also offered to take over hosting of the
>    python.org and starship sites. On behalf of the Python community,
>    we're grateful for this support of the two prime community sites for
>    Python, and we expect to be implementing the transitions shortly.
>
>    These are exciting times for the PythonLabs team - and also for Python
>    and its community. Mainstream successes for Python are showing up
>    everywhere, and we're proud to be a part of such a smart and friendly
>    community. A great year lies ahead!
>
>    Note, however, that moving to ActiveState will have some minor effects
>    on the future of Python development. ActiveState is concerned about
>    the seeming rift between the Perl and Python communities and wants
>    to do its best to help the Open Source scripting community work together.
>    In order to make it easier for Perl programmers to transition to Python,
>    we will add optional curly braces for Python. While we are fully aware
>    of the effect this will have on Python usability, we have finally decided
>    to bite the bullet and accept that until this happens, Python will never
>    be popular.
>
>    Barry has already approved PEP 357, Adding Block Delimiters to Python.
>    Since we are heavily commited to backwards compatability, a transition
>    period of three months has been mandated. For those who want the changes
>    to start sooner, we added "from __future__ import block_delimiters" in
>    Python 2.1, which will be released about two weeks from now.
>
>    Larry Wall and I agreed that now it makes sense for Perl to have
>    the Perl compiler enforce correct indentation in Perl sources. This
>    will probably be implemented in Perl 5.7, and will certainly be in Perl 6.
>    Also, after some talks with Larry, I've decided to adopt the Perl
>    numerical model for Python. The Perl model is simple, predictable and
>    easy to explain. This is a small enough change that it does not need
>    a PEP, and Moshe will implement it before 2.1rc1 is out.
>
>    Now that the catalog-sig finally has a fully working product, ActiveState
>    decided they will base a CPAN competitor on it. This server will be able
>    to deal with both Perl and Python modules. While the client will remain
>    completely Open Source, it was decided that the server will remain
>    ActiveState proprietary. While it is true that the original server was
>    written by the Python community, ActiveState has put a lot of effort
>    into making it general enough, and we need to justify the costs somehow.
>
>    --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)
>
>
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