Cheese Shop: some history for the new-comers

[richard]

So I wrote PyPI back a couple of years ago. It was just a simple cgi script
and some distutils code. I needed to call it *something* and "Python
Package Index" seemed like a fairly obvious name. Unfortunately, it's also
quite a mouthful. A friend suggested "PyPI" as a good shorter name. He also
indicated that it should be pronounced "Pippy" but that never really caught
on (just a little too cutesy for most people, I suppose).

Fast-forward to PyCon 2005. PyPI sprinters in the same room as PyPy
sprinters. I think you may see where this is heading. Every now and then
someone would say "Pie Pie" too loudly in the room, and *all* heads (well,
except the Chandler folk and Brett Cannon). Something needed to be done. A
new name was needed.

For the 6 months or so following PyCon 2005 I called for new name
suggestions. Some of those are in my weblog. Some are in c.l.p archives.
There was *zero* consensus, or anything even closely resembling consensus.
So I did what people always do in this situation, I asked Barry Warsaw to
name. it. And he did, "Cheese Shop". I liked the name, so it was done. When
the new pydotorg machines went live last year, so too did the name
cheeseshop.python.org

Rejoice! No more confusing conversations with PyPy developers!


     Richard