[IronPython] Curious about the development cycle and community involvement

Wed Oct 14 12:46:35 CEST 2009

tyler at monkeypox.org wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Oct 2009, David DiCato wrote:
>
>   
>> Very cool - it's always fulfilling for us to see this level of enthusiasm from our users. Unfortunately, the legal barriers to our accepting external contributions are still very much there, as explained in the FAQ (http://ironpython.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?title=FAQ). As for the CodePlex Foundation, my (limited) understanding is that it could only help the situation, but the organization is brand-new, and we'll have to wait for it to become more established. If you'd like more specific legal information, I'd be happy to relay your questions to the right people.
>>     
>
> Quite perplexing, I still don't understand the reasonings behind the
> iron curtain (puntastic!) between the community of IronPython users and
> the actual development of IronPython itself. I would be delighted if you
> could pass my questions along to the relevant legality-folks with
> regards to the CodePlex Foundation and the reasons behind the blockade
> of external contributions.
>
> I've signed legal disclosures to commit to other corporate backed
> projects in the past, depending on the terms, I've not got too major of
> an issue with it.
>   

The IronPython team are well aware of the frustrating nature of the 
restriction - and are just as frustrated as we are. The reason for the 
restriction is that Microsoft has been sued in the past (and lost) for 
shipping code written by third parties that they *thought* they owned 
the rights to but didn't (they'd paid for the rights but the people 
doing the selling didn't actually own the code - and of course Microsoft 
are a much better target to sue than the people who sold the code).

In result any decision to ship third party code has to go through the 
Microsoft legal department. Whilst this has been done for the IronRuby 
project it has never happened for the (older) IronPython project. This 
is something that the Codeplex Foundation *may* help with once it matures.

>   
>> In the meantime, simply reporting issues you're having with IronPython is one of the best ways to help us improve it. I saw the issue you referenced in [3], and I'm curious if you've run into any other problems through the course of your development. In general, we assign a higher priority to bugs that block a specific application, so you can still push the project forwards without actually writing the patches yourself.
>>     
>
>
> For our specific usecase, our options for JSON are:
>   1) Import and use System.Web.Script.Serialization.JavaScriptSerializer
>     with the <T>.Deserialize 
>   2) Copy/paste the simplejson.py module into our tree
>
> 1 is kind of a non-starter since...I don't usually know what *type* the
> JSON string I'm trying to deserialize
> (JavaScriptSerializer.Deserialize() gives me a
> System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary<T,T> in most cases, or a similarly
> generic/non-python type)
>
> 2 is gross, as you might assume.
>
>   

Why is having a third party dependency 'gross'? It seems quite normal.

> The project we're using IronPython previously (IronWatin, referenced
> previously) is really new, so I've not started incorporating a lot from
> the Python 2.6 standard library as of yet, so I can't comment on how
> much of a "blocker" it is since we've only seen it with the "json"
> module. 
>
> That said, if relative imports are borked, you don't really meet the
> "2.6 compatibility" bullet on the roadmap ;)
>   

That statement I would agree with...

All the best,

Michael

>
>   
>> Finally, regarding our dev cycle, I'll refer you to our IronPython 2.6 Roadmap (http://ironpython.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?title=2.6%20Release%20Plan) for our scheduling estimates. The only caveat here is that we are also doing a RC 2 release, which will push back the final release date accordingly.
>>     
>
> Thanks, this is helpful.
>
>
> One last question, if I were to run a fork of the Subversion tree
> (git-svn(1) woot) which branch should I be using? I see IronPython_Main
> and IronPython_2_6 in trunk/ and I'm not sure which contains active
> development.
>
>
>
> Cheers
>
>
>   
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: users-bounces at lists.ironpython.com [mailto:users-bounces at lists.ironpython.com] On Behalf Of tyler at monkeypox.org
>> Sent: Monday, October 12, 2009 8:03 PM
>> To: users at lists.ironpython.com
>> Subject: [IronPython] Curious about the development cycle and community involvement
>>
>> Howdy, I'm a CPython developer by trade, but I've been watching IronPython evolve and have recently started playing around with 2.6rc1 for a number of smaller projects [1][2].
>>
>> While evaluating IronPython, I've run across a couple of issues [3] that I think I'm capable of helping to fix but I notice that there's this note in the FAQ regarding external contributions:
>>
>> 	Does the IronPython Team accept back source contributions into the IronPython and DLR codebases?
>>
>> I'm curious as to whether this is still the case, FePy looks somewhat...
>> sleepy/out-of-date. How does the CodePlex Foundation fit into this? Does it change things?
>>
>> I know for some other projects (Mono comes to mind) they require an
>> MIT/X11 to commit to core and some paperwork with Novell (presumably so they have their bases covered for commercializing the IP). Is this something that might help open up IronPython to community contributions?
>>
>>
>> Furthermore, to the tune of the "development cycle" it's quite unclear from the site how long the "release candidate" cycle is going to be before the final version of 2.6.0 is released; how long are these cycles typically?
>>
>>
>> I'm really excited about the prospects of incorporating IronPython 2.6 into more of my projects (particularly on top of Mono), but I'd like to able to contribute back where I can to push the project forward.
>>
>>
>> Appreciate any feedback/thoughts :)
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>> -R. Tyler Ballance
>>
>> [1] http://github.com/rtyler/IronWatin
>> [2] http://unethicalblogger.com/posts/2009/10/crazysnake_ironpython_and_java_just_monkeying_around
>> [3] http://ironpython.codeplex.com/WorkItem/View.aspx?WorkItemId=24533
>>
>>     
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