PythonLabs Team Moves to ActiveState

[Emile van Sebille]

Guido and team:

I'm sorry things didn't work out with Digital Creations.  I had hoped that
Python core development had found a natural home, and was looking forward to
seeing the results of a combined effort.  Somehow, imagining a future with
enhanced acquisition is much more interesting than a future with curly
braces.  Can IFEND and DEFEND or even a fork be far behind? (stackless?) I
think that the "build it and they will come" philosophy has worked nicely so
far.

Some clarification may help.  Perhaps you can reconcile the *optional* curly
braces and the "from __future__ import" discrepancy.  It may just be my
misunderstanding, but isn't __future__ designed to allow bleeding-edgers to
write code for what will become python?  That is, won't all __future__
thingys become mandatory?  I believe this is how it has been presented so
far, and makes me think that *optional* curly braces won't be after a short
transition period.

It also occurs to me that ActiveState is already deep into .Net and python
for .Net.  Couldn't you simply provide a 'python for perlites' obfustication
mode?  ;-)

The good news is that I believe that ActiveState will do good things for
Python, and as you say, should provide a stable home for python development.
You join a team of highly respected python people in this move, and the
resulting products will be far from common, and that is exciting.

Good luck to you all,

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Guido van Rossum" <guido at python.org> wrote in message
news:mailman.986086501.5576.python-list at python.org...
> 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.

<snip>