[SciPy-dev] openopt (prelimenary) announce

[Alan G Isaac]

On Thu, 06 Sep 2007, dmitrey apparently wrote:
> so, despite I insisted optimizers remain also as separate 
> package, the idea of merging optimizers(/GenericOpt) to 
> openopt, as I suppose from the very beginning, wasn't the 
> best one, partially because they serves different goals 
> and different motivations. 

On the contrary, I think this was a very good decision.
OpenOpt gains pure Python solvers, and GenericOpt gets
extensive use, testing, and code contributions.

> we could make 2 announcements: one of openopt release and 
> one of optimizers/GenericOpt. 

Since they share a location, a joint announcement seems
appropriate.  I'll post one to this list, and you and 
Matthieu can react.

> in any way, I don't mind if Matthieu want to continue host 
> a part or all his code in /solvers/GenericOpt and 
> /solvers/optimizers directories as it is now). 

That is good. But in any case, such decisions are to be made
by the SciPy development *community*, hopefully on
a consensus basis.

I'm not going to respond in detail to the other message
parts, other than to say I do not really see any problem
**except** for the problem about ensuring that expectations
between mentors and students are aligned when the GSoC
projects *begin*.  I learned a lot about that this summer:
it is easy for people to assume they share a common
understanding when in fact there are some very fundamental
differences in expectations.

I guess I would add my opinion that the most important thing 
is the BSD license, not who holds the copyright.  However to 
correct an impression you seem to have: as far as I am 
aware, neither Jarrod nor I ever suggested that you give up 
your copyright.  We simply insisted that you treat your GSoC 
project as what it was: an opportunity to participate in and 
contribute to SciPy **community**, under the BSD license, 
while interacting with a group of developers from whom you 
can learn a great deal.  To participate in a **community** 
is to treat many decisions as **joint** as to accept and 
indeed welcome the contributions of others to improving the 
scikits code base, including the parts you have been most 
involved in.

Cheers,
Alan Isaac