PythonLabs Team Moves to ActiveState

Sun Apr 1 01:32:59 EST 2001

Guido... admitting that Python will a.) never be popular b.) without curly
braces?

This HAS to be an April fool's joke. Some things in my mind are far fetched
but feasible -- for instance, world peace, intergallactic economic
cooperation, free music on the internet, Republicans and Democrats working
together, George W. Bush becoming an articulate, charismatic speaker, Al
Gore developing a sense of humor about pregnant chads, the Mir crashing
without mishap in the South Pacific, the whole 80's thing, the whole 90's
thing for that matter, even a Real Middle Class Tax Cut some day -- but
Guido changing python to make the indentation scheme obsolete in favor of
Perlesque syntax... and Perl's numerical model... The notion that Larry
"There's More Than One Thousand Ways To Do It" Wall and Guido "You Only
Really Need To Do It One Way" van Rossum can agree on ANYTHING where
language design is concerned...

Something of the fantastic in the very idea, I tell ya...

Not-believing-a-word-of-it-and-doing-a-bad-Tim-Peters-imitation-because-the-
day-that-I-can-do-a-worthy-Tim-Peters-imitation-is-the-day-Python-adopts-cur
ly-braces-ly yours,

Bob Calco
CorTechs, Inc.
rcalco at cortechs.com

# -----Original Message-----
# From: python-list-admin at python.org
# [mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Guido van Rossum
# Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2001 7:55 PM
# To: python-list at python.org
# Subject: PythonLabs Team Moves to ActiveState
#
#
# 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/)
#
#
# --
# http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
#