Brett Cannon wins Frank Willison Award

This morning at OSCON, O'Reilly Media gave Brett Cannon the Frank Willison Memorial Award. The award recognizes Cannon's contributions to CPython as a core developer and project manager for over a decade.

Beginning in 2002, the Frank Willison Memorial Award for Contributions to the Python Community is given annually to an outstanding contributor to the Python community. The award was established in memory of Frank Willison, a Python enthusiast and O'Reilly editor-in-chief, who died in July 2001. Tim O'Reilly wrote In Memory of Frank Willison, which includes a collection of quotes from Frank's insightful and witty writing. O'Reilly Media maintains an online archive of Frank Willison's column, "Frankly Speaking".

O'Reilly Media presents the Frank Willison Memorial Award annually at OSCON, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. The recipient is chosen in consultation with Guido van Rossum and delegates of the Python Software Foundation.

Contributions can encompass so much more than code. A successful software community requires time, dedication, communication, and education as well as elegant code. With the Frank Willison Memorial Award, we hoped to acknowledge all of those things.

  — Tim O'Reilly 

In the open source community, project management is an often underrated skill: given a problem to be solved, and a proposed solution for solving it, define the concrete steps necessary to get a group of volunteers from the point of saying "We should do something about this" to "We have solved that problem".

Brett Cannon has repeatedly volunteered to handle project management responsibilities that have significantly improved the CPython core development infrastructure, from migration to a dedicated bugs.python.org infrastructure, to the initial switch to a distributed version control system, to the current adoption of a more automated development workflow.

Brett Cannon

Since he began as a core developer in 2003, Brett has dedicated significant time to ensuring that the design, implementation, and development of essential parts of the CPython reference interpreter are accessible to new contributors. He wrote the first versions of the Python Developer's Guide and the design documentation for the CPython compiler. He converted the bulk of the import system's implementation from C to Python, created the "devinabox" project to make it easier for new contributors to get started at development sprints, wrote the "Python-dev Summaries" articles from 2002 to 2005, and moderated the python-ideas mailing list since it began in December 2006.

Brett has served on the PSF Board of Directors from 2006-2010, and again from 2013-2014, and was PSF Vice President in 2006-2007, and Executive Vice President from 2007-2010. He is also a gracious ambassador for the Python development community. His thoughtful manner, genuine kindness, and sense of humor have inspired many at PyCons over the years. Whether helping a new contributor understand a code snippet at a sprint or encouraging a new speaker with his confidence in them, Brett shares his positive character with us.

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CubaConf, Day 1

This is the second in a series of posts on my trip in April to Havana, Cuba to attend CubaConf, an International Conference on Free Software. 

Day one of CubaConf started out with a bit of confusion. A last minute change of venue was necessary due to some bureaucratic red tape surrounding the government controlled Palacio del Segundo Cabo. Luckily, a short walk across the Plaza de Armas, the Colegia San Geronimo was available and happy to step in to provide meeting rooms for the approximately 180 speakers and attendees. And in spite of the spotty internet service that plagues the island, difficulties in communicating the change did not prevent the conference from starting smoothly and nearly on schedule. The organizers, including Pablo Mestre, a member of the PSF-Cuba workgroup, deserve much credit for their smooth handling of the situation.



Preliminary announcements and welcoming remarks revealed that speakers and attendees came from 17 different countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Peru, Spain, Turkey, Uruguay, United States, and Venezuela. Sponsors, including the PSF, were mentioned and thanked. 

The keynote by Hamlet López García, a social psychologist from the Cuban Institute of Cultural Research at Juan Marinello, explored the relationship between free software and Cuba’s politics and culture. 

Hamlet López García

López' main thesis, (citing Richard Stallman), was that technologies develop as social processes and are shaped by cultural values. In this way, the general principles of the Cuban revolution can be seen to be in harmony with those of free software. The further adoption and use of free software, according to López, is leading to more democratic access to knowledge and opportunity, not just in Cuba, but globally. This opening talk was enthusiastically received and set a positive tone for the rest of the day.



Once the conference broke into three tracks, I attended a talk by Jacob Appelbaum on the TOR network and the importance of anonymity. Appelbaum explained the ways in which the TOR network was designed to ensure four types of freedom: it's decentralized, encrypted, distributed, and unlike other internet networks, meta-data free (i.e., it does not collect or aggregate meta-data).

Additional talks occurring on day one shared speakers' experiences using open source for projects such as collaborative mapping and creating an online payment system, as well as more theoretical topics such as web development and encryption. Former PSF Director, David Mertz, gave a talk on teaching Python to Data Scientists, a topic that he will reprise in Portland at PyCon's education summit at the end of this month. Talks were given in either English or Spanish, with simultaneous translation provided by one of several bilingual volunteers. 

Another talk worth singling out was a provocative talk by  Heather Marsh on the illusory nature of the power that users assume to derive from the internet. According to Marsh, such internet features as "thought bubbles" and "noise" pose obstacles to collaboration and to challenging the "Ponzi schemes of power." These ideas are more fully presented in Marsh's book, Binding Chaos.

At the end of the day, a tired, but excited crowd posed for a group photo before walking down the block to the conference dinner of Cuban food, mojitos, and beer.  (And by the way, beer costs about $1 per can/bottle--I almost didn't come home.)

CubaConf end of Day 1

Outside the Colegia San Geronimo

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

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Python-Cuba Workgroup

Today I’d like to report on some of the progress that has been made as a result of last years' controversy over an April 1st joke post about a (fictional) PyCon to be held in Cuba. As you may recall, the joke fell flat for many–nonetheless, the intent to instigate a real movement toward greater communication with Cuban Pythonistas, and perhaps to someday hold a conference on the island, was fulfilled beyond the authors' expectations! 

The first step occurred in May with the formation of a Python-Cuba Workgroup, which was recognized in June by the PSF board as an official workgroup with a charter. Since some group members already had contacts with Cuban programmers, the workgroup was able to begin a healthy collaboration. In addition, several Cuban Pythonistas made contact with us after the April 1st newsblog post. Discussion and analysis of issues, including internet access in Cuba, how to accommodate a multi-lingual group, governmental involvement and obstacles, etc., began in earnest over the summer. 

Thanks to the hard work of many, including Kirby Unger, David Mertz, Roberto Rosario, Steve Holden, Luciano Ramalho, Pablo Celayes in Argentina, Olemis Lang in Cuba, and dozens of other supporters and members, the group has recently gotten off the ground, and it looks like great things are about to happen!

Pablo Celayes deserves special mention for his efforts in involving his recently formed Python meet-up group in Cordoba, Argentina in the Python-Cuba effort (Cordoba, Argentina meet-up). Cuban developer, Alejandro Zamora Fonesca, is planning to visit Pablo and the rest of this group in Argentina this month to further discuss the growth of Python in Cuba. We look forward to hearing about that meeting on the Python Cuba mail list. In addition, Pablo will be traveling to Cuba in January, and again in March,  and hopes to have some sort of Python event organized for that time.

Indeed, Python events were already happening in Cuba prior to the formation of our group, and those of us in the US found that there were many Cuban Python developers eager to get more involved (for example, see Twitter). Newer groups, such as the Merchise Start Up Circle in Havana, are quickly growing and are busy planning future events. And plans are also underway to offer workshops on Python and Django  as part of the Cuba Free Software Conference, to take place April 25 - 27.  This large, international event, sponsored by The User Group of Free Technologies in Cuba (GUTL) and The Best of Open Techonologies in Germany (BOOT), is currently looking for speakers and mentors, so if you’re interested, please contact Pablo Mestre (pmdcuba at gmail.com).

These are just a few of the many ideas that are beginning to take form, and I’ve mentioned only a few of the many people involved. But the excitement and momentum are truly building. The Python-Cuba work group communicates by mailman listserv. Please read the archives and subscribe to the list if you’d like to help.

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

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BBC’s micro:bit project open-sourced today!

As you may recall, there have been a couple of previous posts to this blog about the BBC’s micro:bit project  (also see PSF newsblog).

The micro:bit is a small, stripped-down, wearable computer (similar to a Raspberry Pi) and based on an nRF51 chip. The educational project, part of a larger UK program called Make it Digital, is designed to inspire children to become digital creators by giving away 1 million micro:bits to all 11 year-old UK schoolchildren this spring.

Today I heard some exciting news about the project from our good friend, Nicholas Tollervey, which I’m happy to pass along here. 

According to Nicholas: 

From the beginning the BBC have said that Python would be one of the possible languages that the device can be programmed in. The PSF is one of around twenty organisations in the project partnership. Since it’s a microcontroller, and the aim is to run Python… well, there’s a pretty obvious answer when trying to combine those two things. 

We’re incredibly pleased to announce that MicroPython runs on the BBC’s micro:bit. Furthermore, all the work done so far is being open-sourced today and the repository can be found here: https://github.com/bbcmicrobit/micropython

Right now only the code related to the MicroPython port is released. When the device is delivered, all the resources needed to recreate the entire project are to be released under an open license. The laudable intention is to provide an unencumbered legacy so others can build upon and adapt the work of the partnership that has created this device. 

To read more details and learn the story of how MicroPython came to be on the micro:bit, check out Nicholas Tollervey’s blog post found here: http://ntoll.org/article/story-micropython-on-microbit

Finally, there is much to be done. The project needs help from people with skill and experience developing for such devices. Could you contribute something to a project that will touch the lives of 1 million children and leave an open legacy that anyone could re-use? If so then please read the above-linked post and head on over to the code repository.

I hope that many of you will take Nicholas up on his request to contribute to this worthwhile project.

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

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Jessica McKellar receives 2015 Frank Willison Award

Ask any Pythonista to name the best features of Python and they are sure to include its amazing community. For the past 15 years the PSF has recognized this important feature with its Community Service Awards and with a special annual award for outstanding contributions to the Python Community–the Frank Willison Award.

I am extremely happy to report that this year’s Frank Willison Award was presented at OSCON 2015 to Jessica McKellar (see Award Ceremony).

Jessica sharing her knowledge and skills

According to the PSF,

Jessica McKellar has served in many distinguished roles within the Python community: Director, Python Software Foundation; PyCon Diversity Outreach Chair; core organizer of Boston Python, one of Python’s largest user groups; frequent keynote speaker and tutorial presenter; board member of OpenHatch; Boston Python Workshop organizer and evangelist; PSF Fellow; mentor for Outreachy program; core contributor to OpenHatch and Twisted projects. She also has a long history as a Python advocate, as a book author (Twisted Network Programming), training author (Introduction to Python), startup founder, VP of Engineering, and MIT alumna in Computer Science.

Jessica’s tireless dedication to outreach and education created fundamental change in the Python community. In 2011, only 1% of talks given at PyCon were presented by women. Jessica’s outreach efforts included hundreds of individually targeted emails to women in technology, encouraging women to submit talk proposals, and mentoring many through the entire proposal process. In 2014 and 2015, a full 33% of talks at PyCon were given by women.

As a volunteer with genuine commitment to the education and success of others, Jessica spends a significant amount of her time on outreach, encouraging new leaders in the Python community, and sharing how Python education empowers others to change the world. She has touched many Python community members, directly and indirectly, with her grace, intelligence, and humble willingness to listen, collaborate, and celebrate the contributions of others.

The award is a memorial to the legacy of O'Reilly editor-in-chief, Frank Willison, who died in 2001. Author of the column Frankly Speaking, Willison shared his enthusiasm for programming, open-source, and, in particular, Python with his many appreciative readers. His writings and witticisms can be found at O'Reilly Archives and In Memory.

Previous recipients of this prestigious award were: 

• Barry Warsaw (2014) 


• Anna Martelli Ravenscroft (2013) 


• Jesse Noller (2012) 


• Georg Brandl (2011) 


• Christian Tismer (2010) 


• Mark Hammond (2009) 


• Martin von Löwis (2008) 


• Steve Holden (2007)  


• Alex Martelli (2006) 


• Cameron Laird (2004) 


• Fredrik Lundh (2003) 


• Andrew Kuchling (2002)

Please join me in congratulating Jessica McKellar on her well-deserved award and thanking her for her numerous contributions.

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

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BBC Micro:bit successfully launched!

July 7, 2015 BBC Microbit 

Last March, I wrote about a terrific educational project taking place in the UK, with which the PSF is proud to be involved (see PSF Blogpost). I am very happy to report today that the BBC micro:bit project has successfully launched!

The BBC micro:bit release is part of the BBC’s Make it Digital initiative, whose purpose is to prepare a generation for the challenges of a tech-driven world. The project is a collaboration of 29 partners from industry, education, and government. 

Key partners include ARM, Microsoft, Samsung, Barclays, Freescale, Element14, Lancaster University, Nordic Semiconductor, Technology Will Save Us, ScienceScope and the Wellcome Trust.

At the beginning of the school term this September, every year-7 UK student (11-12 years old) will be given a BBC micro:bit computer. Designed to inspire creativity, the BBC micro:bit is pocket-sized, versatile, and, most importantly, easy to use:

Something simple can be coded in seconds – like lighting up its LEDs or displaying a pattern – with no prior knowledge of computing. All that’s needed is imagination and creativity.

The idea, according to Sinead Rocks, head of BBC Learning, is to make using computers creatively as natural to children as using crayons to experiment with coloring. 

The micro:bit can be programmed via web-based editors capable of using several programming languages, including Python, Javascript, C++, Microsoft Touch Develop, and Blocks (a visual language). The user can then save her program, run it in a simulator, and retrieve it any time to load it onto the BBC micro:bit. 

In addition to internet connectivity, the device can also connect, via five I/O rings as well as Bluetooth, to other computers and devices, including Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, Kanos, robots, and motors. When connected, it can be powered off another device, or it can run on its own battery. The micro:bit also features a compass and an accelerometer.

BBC Learning, along with the project’s partners, are providing educational resources and tutorials aligned with school curriculum, in an effort to ensure that teachers are ready when the micro:bits are distributed to students. With open-sourced specs and plans for a non-profit to oversee further educational use of the device, the micro:bit’s initial reach is sure to grow. Commercial development of the device is anticipated by the end of 2015.

The PSF is eager to seize this opportunity to further the use of Python and to increase programming literacy. According to the BBC, 

The Python Software Foundation will be working with the BBC micro:bit to provide a code editor that will help to teach children the Python programming language. They will be working with the Python development community to produce resources and activities that children can build using Python. 

I urge Python developers to volunteer for this effort and to get involved in this wonderful educational initiative. You can read more about this project at: BBC micro:bit and BBC Learning.

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

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PSF funds development: Armin Rigo's CFFI 1.0

In looking back over the PSF newsblog posts, it appears that most of the PSF funded projects I’ve written about were conferences, workshops, and education/outreach efforts. These are, of course, truly important. However, it’s also important to get the word out about several development projects that the PSF has sponsored in 2015. One such project is Armin Rigo’s work on CFFI 1.0. 

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant Armin Rigo $2500 towards cffi development aimed at making cffi generated extension modules importable without runtime dependencies on an extension module build toolchain.

CFFI or C Foreign Function Interface for Python provides a way to call compiled C code, i.e., external C libraries, from Python using interface declarations written in C. This eliminates the need to use a programming language other than C and Python. At the same time, CFFI minimizes the amount of C code that needs to be written, so it really is a boon for Python developers. It works with Python 2.6 and up and with PyPy 2x and 3x. See CFFI Documentation.

CFFI has already had approximately 7 million downloads, so it is clearly of use, but its creator, Armin Rigo (who is also one of the creators of PyPy) saw room for improvement. Specifically, according to Armin, there were two main problems:

1. 
   The difficulties of installation [which] can be seen from outside by looking at various workarounds and 3rd-party documentation that have grown into existence. For example, the setup.py of projects like cryptography, PyNaCl and bcrypt deploys workarounds that are explicitly documented inhttps://caremad.io/2014/11/distributing-a-cffi-project/.
   
   


2. 
   The time taken at import is excessive in some cases. For example, importing pygame-cffi on a Raspberry Pi ARM board takes on the order of 10 to 20 seconds (and this is the fast case where the compiler doesn’t need to be invoked any more)
   
   

Due to the PSF grant, Armin was able to fix both problems. The 1.0 version, now in beta, is available at CFFI 1.0.

Our thanks to the amazing Armin Rigo for this very welcome tool!

Stay tuned for my next post about the PSF’s recent award of $8,000 USD for Read the Docs. 

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

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PSF/NumFOCUS joint Working Group on Scientific Python

For the first time ever, the PSF has joined forces with another open source organization, NumFOCUS, to create a collaborative working group to make decisions on allocating grants or sponsorships for Scientific Python projects, conferences, etc. 

NumFOCUS, based in Austin Texas, has been promoting and funding open source computing resources for scientific research since 2012. Their core projects include AstroPi, Data Carpentry, IPython, Julia, SimPy, NumPy, and SciPy, Matplotlib, Cython, PyTables, and more.

This new joint working group was spearheaded by PSF Director David Mertz, who will co-chair along with mathematician and Python evangelist Tim Couper.

The PSF has recently pledged initial annual support in the amount of of US$25,000, and agreed to match any amount NumFOCUS contributes beyond $25,000, up to $50,000 contributed by the PSF, during the PSF Board meeting on 4/28/15 (for combined funding up to $100,000). 

Image credit: engineering.dartmouth.edu

In forming the Working Group, David reached out via the PSF members' list to call for volunteers. As he wrote,

This note is a call for volunteers … The work needed … [is] keeping in mind a finite budget, and evaluating and discussing requests that come in for grants or sponsorship relative to this budget. In the best case, people connected to scientific communities will also do some outreach to let groups know that funds are potentially available, but it’s also necessary just to weigh requests that come to us independently.

The call for volunteers led to an extremely impressive group representing a range of scientific expertise and interests. The PSF is confident in the group’s ability to make capable evaluations of grant requests that will ensure a judicious use of limited funds.

Here are the WG members' biographies:

David Mertz: Ph.D. in Political Philosophy, gone astray into computer theory, with a stint in computational biochemistry. He has been a Fellow of the PSF since 2008, and a Director since 2009. He is author of Text Processing in Python (Addison Wesley) and the series Charming Python (IBM developerWorks).

Tim Couper: Oxford D.Phil. in Mathematics. Python evangelist and consultant for 16 years, now based in Scotland. Extensive python experience with organisations of all sizes from startups to large retail, pharmaceuticals & finance (banking & hedge funds).

Anthony Scopatz: Computational Physicist and avid Python developer since 2002 and PSF Fellow since 2013. He is coauthor of Effective Computation in Physics (O'Reilly). He will be joining the University of South Carolina as a tenure-track faculty member in Mechanical Engineering in August 2015.

Stéfan van der Walt: Assistant Researcher at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science and a senior lecturer in applied mathematics at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He has been an active member of the scientific Python community since 2006, and frequently teaches Python at workshops and conferences. He is the founder of scikit-image and a contributor to numpy, scipy and dipy.

Travis Oliphant: Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Mayo Clinic; professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at BYU 2001 to 2007 with research in inverse problems and biomedical imaging; creator of SciPy, author of NumPy; founder of Numba, PyData, NumFOCUS, and Continuum Analytics. Currently CEO of Continuum.

Leah Silen: Executive Director of NumFOCUS, Leah has been involved daily in the support of the Python scientific computing community since NumFOCUS began three years ago. She has worked with the board of directors to initiate and carry out fiscal sponsorship, fellowship and grant programs funding both projects and individuals. She has also worked through the organization of PyData events to further support the community as well as on scholarship review committees of multiple conferences.

Dana Bauer: Geographer, Pythonista, open data enthusiast, mom to a future robot programmer. Dana has over 54 repositories at GitHub and works as a developer at Rackspace. 

Kurt Kaiser is the Treasurer of the Python Software Foundation.

Congratulations to the organizers and members and best of luck in your important work. We look forward to hearing about your activities.

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

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