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The Frank Willison Award for Contributions to the Python Community
Contributions can encompass so much more than code. A successful software community requires time, dedication, communication, and education as well as elegant code. With the Frank Willison Award, we hoped to acknowledge all of those things.
—Tim O'Reilly
The Frank Willison Award for Contributions to the Python Community is given annually to a person judged to have made an outstanding contribution to the Python community. The award was established in memory of Frank Willison, a Python enthusiast and O'Reilly editor-in-chief, who died in July 2001. Tim O'Reilly wrote In Memory of Frank Willison, which includes a collection of quotes from Frank's insightful and witty writing. O'Reilly Media maintains an online archive of Frank Willison's column, "Frankly Speaking".
O'Reilly Media presents the Frank Willison Award annually at OSCON, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. The recipient is chosen by O'Reilly Media in consultation with Guido van Rossum and delegates of the Python Software Foundation. The award consists of a framed certificate and one free pass to a future OSCON.
Award Recipients:
Unfortunately, due to a lapse in coordination there was no award in 2005.
Christian Tismer (2010)
Christian Tismer's contributions to the technology behind Python have focused on performance. For example, he is the founder of the Stackless Python project, a micro-threading system with the first implementation of generators and continuations. You can learn more about Stackless from the project's history page and this IBM developerWorks interview with Christian by David Mertz.
Christian also co-founded PyPy, an implementation of Python in Python, with Armin Rigo and Holger Krekel. Christian worked on PyPy full time for a period, using EU funding. Later, he worked on the JIT compiler Psyco with Raymond Hettinger to create Psyco V2. Most recently, he has been employed by CCP Games to work on combining Stackless and Psyco and updating them to support 64-bit systems.
In 1997, as one of his earliest contributions to the Python community, Christian launched the Starship Python website…
When he's not working on Python, Christian enjoys watching movies, reading, and playing piano. You can follow him on twitter @ctismer.”
Mark Hammond (2009)
Mark Hammond, author and long-term maintainer of the win32all package and PythonWin, has been a long-term contributor to Python. Without his contributions it is likely that the Windows platform would be a much less significant part of the Python landscape.
Mark created software that made Python immeasurably more valuable to the Windows community, thereby ensuring that Python was not consigned to the "Linux/UNIX open source" category. He also created the first implementation of Python for Microsoft's .NET environment, was a major contributor to ActiveState's place in the Python world, and has more recently acted as Python ambassador to the Mozilla community.
Mark is also (jointly with Andy Robinson) the author of an O'Reilly title, Python Programming on Win-32.
Martin von Löwis (2008)
Martin von Löwis continues to be a tireless worker on behalf of the Python community. He has been a long-term contributor to the Python core, and regularly answers questions on the Python developers' and users' mailing lists. A PSF director since 2002, he was also the prime mover in transitioning the Python development infrastructure from SourceForge, and has created several Roundup issue trackers for various areas. He chaired the PSF Grants Committee, which among other achievements kept Jython alive when its future looked uncertain.
Steve Holden (2007)
In 2003 Steve Holden founded and chaired the first Python community conference, establishing PyCon as the premier event for Pythonistas in North America. Steve again chaired PyCon in 2004 and 2005. Steve is the author of Python Web Programming, and a frequent blogger and contributor to the Python newsgroup, comp.lang.python. He has served on the Python Software Foundation's Board of Directors since 2004. Steve provides consulting and training services through his company, Holden Web.
Although sadly I never met Frank Willison his spirit permeates the Python community, and has inspired me in my efforts to serve that community. I am honored to join such a prestigious list of recipients. Thank you.
Alex Martelli (2006)
Prolific writer and community member Alex Martelli was selected as the recipient of the 2006 Frank Willison Award. Alex's books include Python in a Nutshell and the Python Cookbook (editor). Alex has written a brief biography relating his Journey to Python.
Cameron Laird (2004)
Cameron Laird is best known in the Python world for his writing: in 1997 he characterized the language for Sunworld readers as "reliable", "suitable for programming in the large", "clean, modern, portable, and extensible", and with "better aesthetics". In 1998, he published the first report on JPython, the first popular "batteries-included" profile of Python, and began editing the weekly "Python-URL!" digest. Subsequent years saw him write about GUI toolkits, Web frameworks, Stackless, IronPython, Web Services, Pyrex, Python-focused books, and much more. He also manages the Tkinter mailing list, occasionally contributes to specialized extensions including Pexpect, pysnmp, python-ldap, and so on, and bases much of the development of his own company, Phaseit, Inc., on Python.
I claim an even stronger proposition: Python is the single best language for most beginners. Its applicability is as wide as any language (yes, including C and Java), and it's quite inviting to first-timers.
Python is the single best general-purpose computing language we now have--better'n C, or Java, or anything else.
Fredrik Lundh (2003)
Fredrik Lundh is well known by his nickname "effbot", so named because of his prolific contributions to the comp.lang.python newsgroup over the years. They became so numerous, in fact, that they became the basis for his book, (the eff-bot guide to) The Python Standard Library. Fredrik is also the author of or major contributor to the PIL, SRE, xmlrpc, Tkinter and Unicode Python packages, among others. Fredrik is a principal of Secret Labs AB.
Andrew Kuchling (2002)
Andrew is a prolific programmer and the author of many articles, including the extensive "What's New in Python" series, published for each version of Python since 2.0. Since receiving the Frank Willison Award, Andrew has served on the PSF Board of Directors and he co-chaired the 2006 & 2007 PyCon community conferences in Dallas, Texas. Andrew is now operating a consulting firm, Green Dragonfly LLC.