Open letter to Guido van Rossum

[Toy]

I've got an idea,

    Why don't you try doing some of the improvements yourself.  If you write
code in Python, I'm sure you could help write a few modules.  Python is
"Open sourced"  and while I'm not in the developing community, I am sure
many people have contributed with modules, code, etc.  One "problem" that
frequently happens from being open source is that people want to improve the
code, so they(with a group of others) start developing their own
enhancements.  The groups eventually split and you end up with stuff like
different versions of Apache Python modules, MySQL modules, etc.  Just look
at Linux, the mess is a thousand times larger.  You have packages coming in
RPMs, ELF, tar.gz, Hell, I can't even name half of them.  There are even
RPMs that don't work on RPM machines.(A lot of the new RPMs from Redhat
don't work on the new Mandrake distributions).
BTW, I hope that Python becomes more mainstream too.
Jason Toy
toyboy at toy.eyep.net
http://toy.eyep.net



Dan Grassi wrote:

> Hi Guido,
>
> Well, I am rather ambivalent about 1.6.  See, I really like python and
> want to use it at work, a dot-com --- in fact I would like it to be the
> standard.  But I doubt that it will come to pass, there are to many
> stumbling blocks.
>
> First and foremost is database support as a part of the languare
> _package_!  In particulay I need Oracle on ix86, a not uncommon database.
>  But that is no trivial task.  Thus python fails because it can not be
> used in a production environment that involves Oracle.
>
> Then there is the mod-python/mod_pyapache mess, two competing versions
> both with major problems ranging from re not working in the module
> version of mod_python to memory leaks in both versions.  Memory leaks are
> a major problem in a shop that is serving over 1 million pages a day.
>
> Also in the area of divergence is the MySQL database interface modules,
> there are at least two and I believe four current versions.
>
> OK, but this is not python!  Well, technically that is true but these are
> problems when one tries to use python in production!
>
> I suggest that you, Guido van Rossum, father and inventor of Python,
> "bless" some versions and thus get development behind single versions
> instead of diverging from each other.  Thjis in much the same manner that
> Linus blesses a release of Linux.
>
> Oh well, this is just wishing upon a star. :-)  At least I do get to use
> python on occasion, thanks.
>
> Dan Grassi