[Python-Dev] 2.7 is here until 2020, please don't call it a waste. (original) (raw)

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Sat May 30 15:53:13 CEST 2015

Antoine Pitrou writes:

In a community of volunteers, ideology is typically a great motivator.

If and only everyone agrees on it.

That, my friend, is your ideology speaking. Some people work on open source to scratch technical itches -- the program doesn't do what they want, they're able to improve it, the license allows them to improve it, so they do, done. Others use that same freedom to change the software to improve the world in other ways. We don't need to agree on why we do the work we do. We only need to agree on an evaluation and arbitration process for determining which work gets released as part of "original Python". More on that below.

Otherwise, it is typically a great divisor.

Only because some people make a point of insisting on implementing theirs[1] -- and others insist on objecting to any mention of it. I think both extremes are divisive -- but nothing new there, extremes usually are divisive.

Now, Christian did say "must" when he suggested considering the environment, and that's obviously not right. To the extent that folks are volunteers and not bound by the professional ethics that Nick professes, there's no must about it. I don't think Christian really meant to try to impose that on everybody in the project, though. It was more a wish on his part as I understand it, one he knows will at best be fulfilled gradually and voluntarily as people come to be aware of the issue and agree with him that some things need to be done to address it.

But if people like Christian choose to work on patches because they are "environmentally friendly", or vote +1 on them, even if that means a clarification or even reinterpretation of maintenance policy, why should we care whether they say what their motivation is?

On the other hand, if it is a change in maintenance policy to commit the Intel patch, IMO you have right on your side to speak up about that (as you do elsewhere). (OTOH, it seems to me that most posters in this thread so far agree that it's a mere clarification of policy, although it's a clear reallocation of effort that probably wouldn't come voluntarily from the core committers.)

You're also right to point out that the nature of the community will change as people paid to work on commercially desirable tasks become committers. Definitely the natures of Linux and GUI framework development changed (as indeed X11 did when it passed from a commercial consortium to a more open organization) as commercial interests started supplying more and more effort, as well as hiring core developers. Whether that prospective change is a good thing for Python is a matter for debate, and (speaking only for myself, and this may not be the appropriate channel anyway) I'm interested in hearing your discussion on that matter.

Even abidance to RMS' writings and actions would probably not be unanimous here...

I assure there's absolutely no "probably" about it. You evidently missed the (intended though obscure) irony of me praising RMS's ideology (see return address).

Footnotes: [1] You could argue that "insisting on implementing" is implied by "ideology", but then I expect that Christian would deny a desire to impose his values on the project.

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