The Future of Collaboration - Daniel Greenfeld

Note

Audreyr took these notes. :)

Intro

Danny cartwheels, still blogs, works on Django Packages and whitespacejobs.org

Mark Pilgrim is gone

  • feedparser, httplib2, Dive into Python, Dive into HTML5
  • How much did we lose with Mark leaving the developer community?
  • kennethreitz created a mirror at https://github.com/diveintomark

Where is httplib2?

  • PyPI? No
  • Not Google code
  • Hard to find cached download
  • Many libraries depend on it

Repeating history?

  • django-piston, python.org, opencomparison.org all have bus factor and need active maintenance

Dark future?

  • Critical Python packages vanish
  • Build scripts fail
  • Can’t always replace from caches/backups
  • Legacy projects unmaintainable
  • Domain knowledge leaves
  • Hard to move forward
  • 3rd party community as critical as core
  • Actually, this is not the future. It’s today

Like the Library of Alexandria

  • When we lose our history, we lose ourselves

Trust issues

  • External and internal social issues
  • Makes collaboration hard
  • Causes “Not Invented Here” plague

Solutions?

Sponsorships

  • But focused on short-term development, unusable code from interns
  • Server costs are not the issue

Community managers

  • Needs core/senior devs
  • They’re busy
  • Volunteers have different priorities

Paid community managers

  • Work with package authors/maintainers
  • Mitigate social issues
  • Precedence: Ubuntu, Fedora, Twilio, Github

How do we keep Python’s community projects active?

  • PSF project incubation: YC-style seed funding
  • Helping market projects via python.org, blogs, other channels
  • Help community projects find a business model, sustain themselves
  • Copy startup model for projects that benefit Python