Python certification?

[Magnus Lyckå]

DG wrote:
> During a recent discussion, one of my colleagues stated that Python was not
> an industry standard (programming language).  

And? That's good, right?

It's not a formal standard, determined by a group of people
from competing companies who all try to strive to create a
competitive advantage for themselves, no. Thank God! C++ went
through the standardization process for roughly 10 years, and
I still don't think there are any fully standard complient
compilers. Obviously, major existing compilers behave
differently, leading to complications working across platforms.
The Java standardization process has become a tool for
competing companies to try to sabotage for each other.

Python language decisions are ruled by Guido van Rossum (GvR),
the creator and lead developer of the language. Since it's
open source, this will only continue as long as this is a good
solution for the involved parties. Too many large and small
companies are deeply involved in python to let the development
of the language and the tools work poorly. The IP rights for
Python is owned by the Python Software Foundation (PSF), see
http://www.python.org/psf/

There are several implementations of Python, notably GvR's
original C based Python, and Java-based Jython, but there are
a few more. Normally, you will use the GvR version though,
and since it's open source, there is not the issue of being
locked to a single vendor. The implementation can thus be
seen as a standard in itself.

Normally, standardization is deemed important for three
reasons:
  * To prevent incompatibilities.
  * To prevent vendor lock-in.
  * To make sure that implementations of the language will
    be available in the future regardless of what happens to
    a particular company.

I can understand if people are worried about using Visual
Basic or Delphi, but with Python this is not an issue.

> Python is OSI (Open Source Initiative) certified, but are there any other
> certifications (e.g. ISO) which Python has, or is aspiring to?

The Python Business Forum (PBF), www.python-in-business.org has
just started to work with related issues. A large test "farm"
has been established at Linkoping University in Sweden, which
will be the center for extensive tests of python and a number
of modules in a large number of different platforms, to assure
that it works correctly everywhere.

The PBF will also make sure that selected python versions (2.2
for now) will have a long period of support, even if the core
python developers continue with 2.3 and beyond. Important bugs
will be backported to 2.2, and it will be availble for download
in an uptodate and working fashion for several years.