PSF Proffers Payment to Port to Python 3

As news of Python 3 porting becomes a more frequent occurrence and Python 3.3 development takes strides towards becoming the version everyone wants, the PSF has their own way of helping: money. With a grant program in place, the PSF is awarding funds to projects that plan an effort to port their work to Python 3.

As we've previously written about, R. David Murray's work to port the email package was funded by a PSF grant. Jean-Paul Calderone took advantage of a grant to port PyOpenSSL. Most recently, Chris McDonough used grant funding to port WebOb to Python 3. The foundation has been able to help these projects make the move to Python 3 and hopes to help even more in the coming year.

As PSF Director Jesse Noller states on http://www.getpython3.com, "The Python Software Foundation is here for not just CPython, or python-core, or python the language. It is here for Python -- the community, its efforts, its developers, designers and people." These grants are being made available for the betterment of the Python community, and funding can be used in any number of ways to get the job done. For some self-employed developers, funding may mean that porting a project could become more than a side-project. For projects with multiple developers, funding could mean a series of team sprints to complete the work. This could even be used in conjunction with funding from the PSF Sprint committee.

If you're involved in a project which could benefit from funding to complete a Python 3 port, Jesse Noller has recently written on the topic and offers his services to assist with grant applications. From templates to reviews, he is willing to step up and help represent projects before the PSF board for approval.

For more information on the PSF's grants program, see http://www.python.org/psf/grants/.

First annual PyCon China a hit in Shanghai

The first annual PyCon China recently wrapped up an excellent event in Shanghai, with the December 3 and 4 conference serving over 450 attendees and just under 500 viewers of their live webcast. The new conference drew so much interest that over 100 people were put on a waiting list to get in.

The conference schedule included 25 topics with 13 of them being 45+ minute presentations. After a keynote speech by Sting Chen titled "Python Enriches the World", the conference went on to cover Tornado, the Xunlei download manager, OpenStack, and others. They also included a lightning talk series with twelve 10-15 minute sessions. As with many other PyCons around the world, video of each talk is available online.

After the conference, attendees reported about the event here and here. Tech news sites InfoQ and ITEye also posted coverage of the conference.

The PSF applauds the PyCon China organizers and their sponsors for making a great conference, and we hope to hear about PyCon China in 2012!

Boston Python Workshop PSF Grant

(This is a guest post by Jessica McKellar, a Boston Python User Group organizer and co-organizer of the Boston Python Workshop for women and their friends.)

I am thrilled to report that the Python Software Foundation's Outreach and Education Committee awarded a $3300 grant to the Boston Python Workshop to support and grow the workshop over the next 8 months. We are excited to continue our successes at bringing more women into the Boston Python community and to take the show on the road!

The Boston Python Workshop

The Boston Python Workshop is a free, volunteer-driven introduction to the Python programming language for women and their friends who have no or limited programming experience. We run the workshop every 2 months for between 30 and 50 women, and it has run 4 times so far. We strive to:

• Show new programmers and the Boston Python community examples of smart, confident, capable programmers of all backgrounds.
• Bring new, awesome, diverse people into the local Python community through diversity and outreach events.
• Inspire others to run their own introductory workshops and outreach events, and to get more user groups thinking about diversity and outreach.

An important part of our philosophy is a commitment to running the workshop as part of the local user group.

This Python Software Foundation grant will help us run the next three workshops in Boston and bootstrap workshops in 3 new cities. As a result of this grant:

• Over 200 women will learn Python fundamentals and join their local programming communities as empowered, confident beginners who are excited to continue learning.
• 3 new Python user groups will learn how to run high-quality diversity outreach events.
• Volunteers at the workshops will get experience with public speaking and teaching technical content -- a great stepping stone to leading future PyCon talks and tutorials!
• The Python community as a whole will continue to benefit from our shared, online, Creative Commons-licensed workshop material as we expand and refine it.

Results

The workshop has resulted in dramatic, lasting diversity improvements for the Boston Python User Group. Many workshop alums are now fixtures at our hack nights and lecture-style events, and the group has gone from 0-3% women at its events to consistently over 15%. Additionally, group membership has doubled since the workshops started, to over 1350 people, making it the second-largest Python user group in the US.

If you do the math you'll see that we aren't just bringing women into the user group through the workshop. The secret is that running beginner-friendly outreach events for women focuses the group on being more welcoming to everyone. Our monthly hack nights grew out of the workshop and are one example of bringing beginner-friendly ideas from the workshop to the group as a whole. The Boston Python user group is now a more diverse and vibrant community full of beginners, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, and people switching to a career in software/IT, and we're very happy that the workshop has played a significant role in this.

Beyond Boston

We want to help other user groups see the same kinds of successes that we've had here in Boston, and a large part of this PSF grant is dedicated to bootstrapping workshops in other cities. If you want to bring the workshop to your city, read the full grant proposal and get in touch!

All of our material is online and shared through a permissive Creative Commons license. Check out an example curriculum and photos from the workshops. Our goal of stress-free experiences for attendees makes our material a good base for other intro events; for example, we believe our cross-platform installation instructions for Python are the best we've seen.

We look forward to a larger, more diverse Python community, and we want to thank the Python Software Foundation for supporting our efforts. The Outreach and Education Committee, PSF Grants program, and PSF Sprints program are all interested in new grant requests to push the Python world forward. Make something awesome happen in your city!

2011 Frank Willison Memorial Award

The 2011 Frank Willison Memorial Award for Services to the Python Community has been awarded to Georg Brandl.

Georg has been a core contributor to CPython since 2005, contributing bug fixes for compiler internals and modules such as pdb. His most widely known contributions are to Python's documentation, through writing as well as by creating and maintaining the Sphinx tool chain for converting reStructuredText input files to more easily consumed formats such as HTML and PDF.

The video announcing Georg's award at OSCON 2011 is available on YouTube.

Making Documentation Easier

Earlier versions of Python used LaTeX and a Perl-based tool-chain to convert documentation into HTML and PDF. The reliance on Perl, and the relative difficulty of contributing to LaTeX-formatted source files, came up from time to time, but Georg was the one to finally take on the problem of building the necessary tools to manage the content in another format, and then converting all of the existing files.

Georg studied the docutils project and decided that it met most of the requirements, but needed a few custom markup features and a tool to convert individual input files to a unified output document. He wrote a tool called "doctools" for Python's documentation, which was eventually re-christened to Sphinx "because of the build tool for python.org, which was called Pyramid -- and unhappily without regard to the two existing projects called Sphinx."

Over time, the user base for Sphinx grew beyond CPython's documentation team, and Georg continues to work with other contributors to make it more generally useful for other projects. For example, some of the Python-centric features have been reorganized with the recent addition of the "domains" system, allowing Sphinx to be used for projects written in C, Java, and other languages just as easily as Python.

When I asked him about Sphinx, Georg said,

Today I'm very happy and very proud of what the community has done for documentation, also thanks to Sphinx: while Python itself always had excellent docs, now extensive and usable docs are basically a trademark of the whole Python community (just look at ReadTheDocs or packages.python.org).

About Georg

Georg is a PhD student of Physics. He works at the Munich research reactor slash neutron source on magnetism, researching novel materials for the computing of tomorrow. He uses Python to control experiments consisting of dozens of individual devices, and for teaching other scientists how to do so efficiently. When he is not working on Python-related projects, Georg likes to cycle and to cook.

About the Award

Since 2002, O'Reilly Media has presented the Frank Willison Award for Contributions to the Python Community to someone who has done outstanding work for 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. Previous recipients include Christian Tismer (2010), Martin von Löwis (2008), and Steve Holden (2007).

PSF Granted PyTexas 2011 US$750

The Python Software Foundation gave the recent PyTexas conference US$750 in funds.

About the Conference

PyTexas 2011 was the fourth annual free Python programming conference in Texas. It took place Saturday, September 10 - Sunday, September 2011 at the Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. They have a blog that has some photos from the conference on it. All of the talks at PyTexas were recorded and are starting to appear on NextDayVideo and Miro. If you would like to help plan next year's conference, you can join the PyTexas mailing list.

They estimate about 170 people attended PyTexas 2011, up from 94 at PyTexas 2010, and 22 at PyTexas 2009.

PyCon 2012 Proposals Due 12 Oct.

PyCon 2012, the tenth annual Python conference, is accepting proposals for talks, tutorials, and posters through 12 Oct 2011. Please submit proposals at the PyCon speaker page, and then encourage someone else to prepare one, too.

Call for Proposals

Last year set records for attendance and talk submissions, and the conference organizers are looking forward to an even bigger and better conference this year. Anyone, whether hobbyist or professional programmer, can propose a talk, tutorial, or poster. The call for proposals includes recommendations for creating a good submission.

About PyCon 2012

PyCon 2012 will be held in Santa Clara, California, from March 7 - 15. The conference itself runs March 9 - 11 with two days of tutorials preceding the conference, and four days of sprints following.

Arc Riley Receives PSF Community Service Award

The Python Software Foundation has presented a Community Service Award for the third quarter of 2011 to Arc Riley for dedicated long-term support through organizing the PSF's Google Summer of Code activities, and by managing DNS for PSF servers.

Please join us in recognizing Arc's hard work and dedication.

Nick Coghlan Receives PSF Community Service Award

The Python Software Foundation has presented a Community Service Award for the third quarter of 2011 to Nick Coghlan for outstanding core development work and technical leadership, particularly through the Python Mentors project.

Please join us in showing Nick that his contributions to the community are appreciated.

Tarek Ziadé Receives PSF Community Service Award

The Python Software Foundation has presented a Community Service Award for the second quarter of 2011 to Tarek Ziadé for his hard work leading the effort to revamp Python's packaging tools.

The Python Software Foundation is pleased to recognize Tarek's contributions to the community.

Laura Creighton Receives PSF Community Service Award

The Python Software Foundation has presented a Community Service Award for the second quarter of 2011 to Laura Creighton in recognition of her continuous efforts in making community events happen, and especially for her work with the PyPy team.

Please join us in thanking Laura for her contributions to the community.

Benjamin Peterson Receives PSF Community Service Award

The Python Software Foundation has presented a Community Service Award for the first quarter of 2011 to Benjamin Peterson for his work as Release Manager and the numerous contributions to the Python Core.
The Python Software Foundation is pleased to recognize Benjamin's contributions to the community.

Van Lindberg Receives PSF Community Service Award

The Python Software Foundation has presented a Community Service Award for the first quarter of 2011 to Van Lindberg for his leadership work on PyCon 2010 and 2011, as well as the pro bono legal work done for the PSF over the years.
The Python Software Foundation is pleased to recognize Van's contributions to the community.

PSF Provides Grant to Port WebOb

The Python Software Foundation has provided Chris McDonough with US$3000 to port the WebOb project to Python 3. The port is scheduled to run between Oct. 1-31, with the results to be received on or before Nov. 30.

Chris has actually begun work a little early and completed porting a significant amount of the code already. There is still testing and documentation work to do, however. You can follow his progress through the project's Github repository.

About WebOb

WebOb provides wrappers around the WSGI request environment, and an object to help create WSGI responses. The objects map much of the specified behavior of HTTP, including header parsing and accessors for other standard parts of the environment. The current version runs on Python 2.6 and up.

Current Schedule

Over the next few weeks, Chris will be updating the documentation and testing WebOb against the "in the wild" things that depend on it. He encourages those who use WebOb to check out his source from Github and try it with Python 3 and submit bugs if they find any. You can also use the #pyramid channel on IRC to report success stories or ask questions of Chris (AKA: mcdonc).

About Chris McDonough

Chris is a developer from Fredericksburg, VA, USA who has been using Python since 1999, mostly to create web applications. Chris is the mastermind behind the Pyramid web framework, the Supervisor process manager, and the Repoze set of middleware and applications. Chris' ohloh profile provides a good overview of his open source contributions.

PSF Grants PyCon PL 2011

The Python Software Foundation approved a US$750 grant for the PyCon PL conference in Poland. This is the fourth edition of the Polish version of PyCon. It aims to integrate developers, designers and managers interested in using Python. Such meeting makes a great opportunity to meet new people and exchange experiences and ideas.

The PyCon PL 2011 was held in Przedwiośnie Hotel situated in Mąchocice Kapitulne near Kielce city from September 22th to September 25th.

PSF Grants PyCon Ireland US$1500

PSF Grants PyCon Ireland US$1500

The Python Software Foundation recently approved a grant of US$1,500 to PyCon Ireland.

Date and Location

PyCon Ireland 2011 will be taking place in the beautiful city of Dublin from October 8th through the 9th.

About PyCon Ireland

This is the second Python conference held in Dublin, Ireland. The event brings together the Python community for a weekend of talks, tutorials, workshops and sprints.

PyCon Ireland is organised by the Python Ireland Committee, a bunch of enthusiastic Pythonistas based in Dublin, a community effort for the community.

Whether you're a lad or a lass, now is a good time to book your trip to verdant Ireland.

PSF Grants PyArgentina US$1500

The Python Software Foundation approved a US$1,500 grant for the PyArgentina Conference. PyArgentina is the premier Python conference in the city of Junin, Argentina which is in the Buenos Aires Province. The conference is hosted and run by PyAr, the Python Users Group of Argentina. You can go to the conference website now to register, view the current schedule, and learn who is coming and from where.

If you have ever wanted to go to South America, now you have a reason! Go register today!

PyCon DE 2011 Funding

The PSF Board of Directors has awarded a $1500 USD grant to sponsor PyCon DE 2011.

Date and Location

PyCon DE 2011 will be held from October 4th to 9th in Leipzig, Germany. The conference will be held at the Leipziger Kubus.

PyCon DE

PyCon DE 2011 is the first PyCon in the German-speaking countries. It consist of one day of 12 high-quality tutorials, three days of more than 60 talks, and two days of sprints. The topics reflect the wide usage of Python, including web development, science and engineering, testing, Python in business, databases, financial engineering, code quality and much more. The organizers are expecting between 250 and 300 attendees from the excited German-speaking Python community.

More Information

For more details, refer to the PyCon DE 2011 website.

July 2011 Members' Election Results

The Python Software Foundation selected ten new nominated members during the election held in July 2011.

New Nominated Members

Nominated members are individuals or entities who have demonstrated a commitment to the Python language and community. They are nominated and elected by existing members of the foundation.

Giovanni Bajo

Giovanni Bajo has contributed to the community as an organizer for the EuroPython and PyCon Italy conferences, and as a founding member of Python Italia. He also contributes to the PyQt and PyInstaller projects

Massimo DiPierro

Massimo DiPierro is an Associate Professor at the School of Computing and Digital Media of DePaul University and the Director of the Master of Science program in Computational Finance. He is also the manager and founder of MetaCryption LLC and Experts4solutions LLC. Massimo's open source contributions include web2py and fermiqcd.net.

Mike Driscoll

Mike Driscoll is a member of the PSF Communications team, where he is one of the most frequent posters on this blog. He also writes for the Python Insider and PyCon blogs. Mike is active in the Python community in Iowa and founded Pyowa, the local Python user group. He also helps on the PyCon organizer and program committees.

Alex Gaynor

Alex Gaynor has contributed to the PyCon program committee for the past two years. He also has delivered presentations at PyCon, DjangoCon, DjangoCon EU, and PyOhio.

Alex has commit rights for PyPy, Django, CPython, and Unladen Swallow. He has also contributed to dozens of other projects through github.

Asheesh Laroia

Asheesh Laroia is involved in OpenHatch a project to mentor new members of the open source community. He has helped to organize outreach events such as "A project-driven introduction to Python for women and their friends".

Jessica McKellar

Jessica McKellar is a maintainer for the Twisted and OpenHatch projects. She also works on outreach and education projects such as "A project-driven introduction to Python for women and their friends". Jessica also helps to organize Python user groups.

Tetsuya Morimoto

Tetsuya Morimoto is active in the Japanese Python community and is on the staff for PyCon JP. He has translated a significant portion of "Python Module of the Week" into Japanese, and works on the PSF Communication team to organize the translation process and working on the Japanese version of the Python Insider blog. Tetsuya uses Python extensively in his work, and contributes to the pyrtm, Pikzie, and ikazuchi projects.

Paulo Nuin

Paulo Nuin is a member of the PSF Communications team. He writes for the PSF blog and leads the Portuguese translation team for Python Insider. As part of mentoring undergraduate and graduate students at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada, Paulo has encouraged the use of Python and BioPython for daily lab and informatics work and organizes a "Python for Bioinformatics" workshop.

Audrey M. Roy

Audrey Roy has been instrumental in the creation and initial success of the PyLadies outreach group in Los Angeles and will be one of the keynote speakers at PyConAU 2011. She is a core developer for DjangoPackages and the associated Packaginator open source project.

Gavin M. Roy

Gavin Roy is the CTO of myYearbook.com, where he encourages the use of Python and contributes internally developed code to the open source community. He supports two local Python user groups, PhillyPUG in Philadelphia, and PUG-IP in Princeton, NJ. He was a speaker at PyCon 2011 in Atlanta and participated in the Program Committee. Gavin is also the primary maintainer of the pika module for interacting with RabbitMQ.

PSF Membership

The FAQ contains more information about membership in the Python Software Foundation.

Tell Us About Your User Group

The Python Software Foundation is conducting an international survey of Python User Group organizers to help us better serve the large and ever-expanding Python User Group community.

The survey contains questions on user group organization, events, demographics, and growth. There are some questions with numerical answers, and while your best guess is fine, you may find it helpful to gather some statistics on your user group membership before starting the survey (example statistics include the number of active members and the size and topics for recent user group events).

We expect this survey to take around 30 minutes to complete. We appreciate your time and honesty in answering these questions.

This survey was written by Jessica McKellar, organizer for the Boston Python Meetup, and Jesse Noller, PSF board member and PyCon chair.

User group organizers, please click here to begin the survey.

Free Tickets for PyNZ

The Python Software Foundation is once again sponsoring an international conference. This time is the Kiwi's PyCon 2011 to be held on August 27th and 28th at Te Whaea in Wellington, New Zealand.

As a sponsor, the PSF received several passes to the conference, and is offering them to foundation members or other members of the Python community. Preference will be given to students or other individuals with financial aid needs--especially those just getting into Python!

If you wish to take advantage of the tickets or know of someone local, a student, or someone else who would love to go but can not cover the admission, contact Jesse Noller (jnoller@python.org) or the PSF board (psf@python.org).

PyLadies gets a PSF Grant

The PSF has given a grant of US$1220 to the PyLadies for use at their women’s Python events. In addition, the Python Sprints project has announced a separate grant of US$300 to PyLadies to go toward organizing a Python sprint in Los Angeles.

PyLadies

PyLadies is a group of women who use and love the Python programming language. They organize workshops, meetups, and hackathons with a goal of increasing the number of women active in the Python community. They started in Los Angeles, California, but plan to expand with local chapters in other areas.

June 18: PyLadies/SoCal Python Interest Group Hackathon

The SoCal Python Interest Group and LA PyLadies are two of LA’s biggest Python user groups. They are teaming up for a day of sprinting Saturday June 18, 2011. Tickets are available through the eventbrite site.

Schedule:

• 2-7pm: Hack on your own projects
• 7-8pm: Dinner, drinks, and lightning talks
• 8pm-midnight: Python Ladies’ Night 4 at The Hollywood Canteen. Gentlemen of the Python community and friends not attending the hackathon are invited too. The more, the merrier!

This is no ordinary sprint: thanks to the pythonsprints.com grant, at least 10 mentors will be on hand to provide one-on-one help and tutoring throughout the event. Mentors will bring beginners up to speed and teach attendees a variety of Python-related skills, such as git, PyPI packaging, Sphinx docs, installing Python, and other open-source subjects. Think of this as free Python tutoring!

Free T-shirts for Open Source Work

Participants in the hackathon who release their projects as open source (or contribute to an existing open source project) will receive limited-edition PyLadies/PyLadies Supporter t-shirts, funded by the PSF.

Invite the Smart Women in Your Life

The hackathon is open to participants of all skill levels. Invite a smart lady or two of any age to attend the event with you. Even if they are absolute beginners, the mentors will help them start learning Python through online tutorials such as Learn Python The Hard Way, while you hack on other projects.

Contact

Contact audreyr at pyladies dot com with questions about PyLadies or the hackathon on June 18.

The Python Core Mentorship Program

Jesse Noller recently announced the formation of the Python Core Mentorship program. The idea behind the program is to help programmers, including students and developers from other projects, connect with experienced contributors who serve as mentors to ease them into Python Core development.

Contributors Wanted

The mentors will help people regardless of experience level by bringing them up to speed, answering questions, and giving guidance as needed in a non-confrontational and welcoming way. The contributors will receive guidance through the entire contribution process, including discussions on the related mailing lists, the bug tracker, Mercurial, code reviews, and much more.

Early Success

The program already has been successful, and the participants have actively committed a number of patches. There have also been several constructive discussions on the mailing list, helping guide people in the right direction for a variety of issues.

Code of Conduct

The program has a code of conduct explained on the website that aims to assuage concerns many new contributors have when interacting with experienced developers and mailing lists on contribution in general. Jesse and the other mentors hope that this program can act as a model for other projects long-term, not just benefiting Python-Core. They also want the program to help increase the overall diversity of the contributors to Python.

Signing Up

The program is run via the mailing list and has a clear, concise website devoted to it. If you would like to join to ask questions and begin on the path of core contribution, or even if you are an experienced developer (even experienced in Python-Core) looking to ask questions you're worried about asking on other lists, this is an excellent opportunity to jump in, ask and get your feet wet!

Summer pyGames Registration Open

The 2011 Summer pyGames event is now accepting registrations for student teams and volunteer coordinators. Registration will remain open until the competition begins on 11 June at 9:00 AM US Eastern time.

Summer pyGames

The Summer pyGames project is a six-week long competition during which high school students develop open-source educational software and games to be used and distributed to schools in South Carolina. Many of last year's competing teams presented at the FIRST Championship in St Louis. The program has also been showcased at the FIRST Robotics Palmetto Regional, POSSCON and INNOVENTURE Southeast.

Competition Details

The Summer pyGames will begin on June 11th at 9am with the announcement of this year's challenge. Students will have 6 weeks to create a new video game or modify previous games submitted to the competition. Scoring, theme, and rules will be announced at the season kickoff.

Teams may be made up of 1-7 students. The competition is geared for high school age students, high school graduates for 2011 are welcome to participate. Younger students may be admitted to the competition upon request. All teams must have an adult contact who can communicate directly with the Summer pyGames coordinators.

Resources will be available on the Summer pyGames website, and additional forums and chat channels will be made available to registered teams. Volunteers will be available to assist students with questions regarding their projects.

The projects will be graded by professional programmers, graphic artists, audio professionals, teachers, and students.

Sponsors

The Python Software Foundation has given the Summer pyGames organization a grant of US$1,000. After combining the grant with contributions from One Laptop Per Child, BAE Systems, Reaction Apps LLC, The Palmetto Project, BOSCH, and FIRST Robotics Team 342, the organizers plan to offer netbook computers as the grand prize for the competition this year.

Additional prizes and donations are still needed for the 2011 season. Donations can also be made via Paypal at the Summer pyGames website. Summer pyGames is a 100% volunteer run non-profit organization (501(c)3 under the Palmetto Project). All donations go directly toward prizes for the students.

PSF Needs Help Creating Logos

The Python Software Foundation board is looking for volunteers to create logos that can be made available to supporters and members of the PSF. Whether you are a professional graphics artist or you just enjoy creating artwork, the PSF would appreciate your contribution.

PSF Member Logos

The first set of logos is for members and sponsors of the Foundation. We need logos for the following support levels, listed in order from lowest to highest:

• Supporter of the Python Software Foundation
• Honorary Associate Member of the Python Software Foundation (HAMs)
• Sponsor Member of the Python Software Foundation
• Principal Sponsor of the Python Software Foundation
• Patron Sponsor of the Python Software Foundation
• Benefactor Sponsor of the Python Software Foundation
• Member of the Python Software Foundation

Python Marketing

The PSF also needs several other logos for Python 2 and 3 marketing. For example, a set to identify which version of Python is supported by a piece of software. There are three combinations:

• Supports Python 2
• Supports Python 2 and 3
• Supports Python 3

Mobile Applications

Developers occasionally request permission to use the logo for mobile phone application icons. Ideally, we can establish a standard for these (such as a square with one line of text below the Python logo).

Logo Variations

The PSF trademark committee frequently receives requests for permission to use modified versions of the standard Python logo. Ideally, all the new logos should be available in four variations for size and color. Having wide and tall versions, like the existing "Python powered" logos on the website, will allow the logo to be used in different layouts. Versions with and with dark and light backgrounds will let it to fit into different color schemes.

Submitting a Proposal

Email the PSF board (psf at python dot org) with a URL to your proposal. The font files for Flux Regular, used in the official Python logo, will be made available to designers who need them.

The final logos needs to be licensed to the PSF with the option to re-license to other projects or uses. If your submission is selected, you will be asked to sign a contributor agreement.

GSoC Student Applications Accepted

The Python Software Foundation is pleased to announce that 36 applications from students wishing to participate in the Google Summer of Code program have been accepted with Python-related projects sponsored by the PSF.

Accepted Projects

Below is a list of the projects accepted for this summer. The links point to the application abstracts on the GSoC site, so click through for more details about a given project.

Name	Project Title
Amaury Medeiros	PySoy’s interactive widgets
Anthus Williams	Mesh morphs for PySoy
Bart Baker	statsmodels times series and state-space model estimation
Ben Edwards	Implement Community Detection Algorithms in NetworkX
Benedict Stein	Mailman: # Complete the Django web u/i
Boris FELD	PYpi Test Infrastructure
Daniel Kluev	Pyjamas - in-browser python interpreter
Daniel Neuhäuser	Developing a benchmark suite (for Python 3.x)
Danilo Freitas	Turn Codespeed into a multi-project, statistically savvy application
Douglas Morato	TRYTON : Add full text search capabilities on Tryton records
Drew Rodman	Mailman 3 Pipermail SQL conversion and upgrade script
Dushyant Bansal	Developing Archives for Mailman 3
Ezio Melotti	Enhancements to the Python issue tracker
Greg Slodkowicz	Python Import Engine
Henri Bollig	Tryton, Pysql, python module to generate SQL strings
Xu Dehai	fulfil setuptools features for distutils2
Idan Kamara	Mercurials command server
Joe Dallago	Pylons Project - Porting Pyramid to Python 3
Joel Bohman	Porting Pyramid to Python 3
Jon Neal	Game Networking using ICE-UDP for pysoy
Juhani Åhman	PySoy: Enhanced 2.5D scenes
Mark Florisson	Cython: Supporting Parallelism, Templates and Typed Views on Memory
Max Holtzberg	Implementing a POS system for the Tryton project
Mayank Singh	Motion-sensing as an alternative user input for PySoy games
Pieter Holtzhausen	Focused improvements to scikits.image
Putra Manggala	NetworkX: More Flow!
Rodrigo Hübner	A Rich Text Editor for Tryton Client
Romain Guillebert	Python backend for Cython using PyPy's FFI
Sara Foster	PySoy Scene Designer
Sara Kazemi	Creature Artificial Emotion [PySoy]
Martin Leon Sébastien	[Tryton]Relatorio: FODT format, embed opendocument and support for opendocument spreadsheet.
Torsten Becker	Implementing a Flexible String Representation for Python Based on PEP 393
Vlad Niculae	Dictionary learning in scikits.learn
Wojciech Wojtyniak	Implementing parallel builds of Python's modules
Yeswanth Swami	PyTI(PyPI Testing Infrastructure)
Yun Lee	Improve Mercurial's built-in help

Statistics

This has been a growth year for the PSF's involvement in GSoC. We have had the largest group of applicants and mentors since we began participating in the program, up about 10% from last year. Students submitted 89 applications, both for core Python development work and for one of the projects being sponsored by the PSF. The community has provided 72 mentors to help the students.

Increasing Diversity

The PSF is committed to increasing the diversity of the Python community. One way we have been working toward that goal is by encouraging women and other minorities to apply to participate in GSoC through one of the PSF-sponsored projects. This year, three of the 36 accepted applications are from women. That is an improvement over past years, but we still have work to do to raise the participation rate further.

What Next?

The GSoC program is now in the Community Bonding Period. Community members should watch for messages from the student participants on mailing lists and in other forums, and take the opportunity to get to know them. This is also a good time to introduce them to the development tools and processes, and answer questions about how patches are reviewed and approved or how best to communicate with other team members.

For more details about the schedule, see the GSoC timeline on the project web site.

EuroPython Early Bird Registration Deadline is 12 May

The early bird deadline for registering to attend EuroPython 2011 is midnight 12 May. The discount for registering early is €60 for standard tickets, so reserve your spot now, before the price raises!

EuroPython

EuroPython will be held in Florence, Italy June 20-26. It is the official European conference about the Python programming language. For more information about the amazing lineup of tutorials, events, and talks, check out the program guide on the website.

Uniblue Systems Ltd. Joins the PSF as Sponsor Member

The Python Software Foundation is happy welcome Uniblue as a sponsor member. Uniblue is a software company with products designed to improve the speed and stability of PC operating systems.

Uniblue explained their interest in the Python Software Foundation:

Our success with Python has shown us, clearly, how important is the strength of the Python community to our own long-term strategic success. Ultimately we benefit from a Python language that is robust, bug-free and as broadly supported by the development community as possible. By deepening our commitment to Python we can motivate our current development team, while also demonstrating to potential future employees that a career with Uniblue is a path to more actively participating in the broader Python project. Combined, these two vectors will help us build the team we need, while also helping Python develop its code and its community.

Becoming a Sponsor

Sponsor members pay annual dues to support the Foundation's activities. Prospective sponsor members apply for membership to the PSF board. The board verifies that they meet the criteria set out for sponsor members and then votes on whether to recommend them for sponsor membership in the next election. For more information about membership in the Python Software Foundation, refer to the Membership FAQ.

Next PSF Members Meeting: EuroPython 2011

The next official meeting for members of the Python Software Foundation will be held Tuesday, 21 June 2011 19:30 CEST (local time) at EuroPython in Florence, Italy. The meeting will take place at the EuroPython conference venue, the Grand Hotel Mediterraneo. Attendance is expected to be similar to the event as last year in Birmingham, when 30 PSF members and 8 invited non-members participated.

If you plan to attend, please contact meeting chair Marc-André Lemburg so we can estimate the size of the room we will need.

For more details, see the Members Meeting Agenda in the PSF wiki.

PyPy Receives US$10,000 at PyCon USA

The PyPy Project received US$10,000 from the Python Software Foundation at the 2011 USA Python Conference in recognition for the speed with which the project has matured. Jesse Noller officiated, and gave them the check on behalf of the PSF. You can read their response on the PyPy status blog. We would like to congratulate them on their success and wish them well!

Online Degree Reviews Joins the PSF as Sponsor Member

The Python Software Foundation is happy to welcome Online Degree Reviews as a sponsor member. The Online Degree Reviews website allows students to review and discuss experiences about online college degrees. The site is written in Python using the Django web framework.

Steve Rawlinson gave their reasons for signing up to sponsor the Foundation:

We'd like to give back to the Python community that made Online Degree Reviews possible by using some of the advertising revenues the site generates. We hope that our sponsorship of the Python Software Foundation will allow developers to focus on what they do best, including continued improvements to the language, and support the Python language eco-system.

Becoming a Sponsor

Sponsor members pay annual dues to support the Foundation's activities. Prospective sponsor members apply for membership to the PSF board. The board verifies that they meet the criteria set out for sponsor members and then votes on whether to recommend them for sponsor membership in the next election. For more information about membership in the Python Software Foundation, refer to the Membership FAQ.

Zimbio Joins the PSF as a Sponsor Member

The Python Software Foundation is pleased to welcome Zimbio as a new sponsor member. Zimbio is the online magazine publisher behind pop culture websites http://zimbio.com (covering entertainment news) and http://stylebistro.com (covering fashion). Their publishing platform and content analysis tools are built in Python.

Danny Khatib gave this explanation for sponsoring the PSF:

We love Python. We have benefited greatly from its open source nature and we have vested professional and personal interests in helping it thrive. For technical recruiting purposes, we want to align ourselves more closely with the open source technologies we embrace (primarily Python and Django). From an awareness perspective, we want to be known as the most technologically sophisticated media company on the planet, so engineers will be excited to work for us. From a talent perspective, we hope that getting more involved with the Python Software Foundation and discussion will enable us to more easily identify great talent.

Becoming a Sponsor

Sponsor members pay annual dues to support the Foundation's activities. Prospective sponsor members apply for membership to the PSF board. The board verifies that they meet the criteria set out for sponsor members and then votes on whether to recommend them for sponsor membership in the next election. For more information about membership in the Python Software Foundation, refer to the Membership FAQ.

The PSF Elects New Members

The Python Software Foundation is pleased to announce the roster of new nominated members chosen during the most recent round of elections. Nominated members are individuals or entities who have demonstrated a commitment to the Python language and community. They are nominated and elected by existing members of the Foundation. For more information about membership in the Python Software Foundation, refer to the FAQ.

Ned Batchelder

Ned Batchelder organizes the Boston Python Meetup group and is a frequent PyCon speaker. He maintains coverage.py, a widely-used module for analyzing test coverage of source code. Most recently, he has been working with others in the Boston meetup group to create workshops with the goal of increasing the diversity of our community.

Vern Ceder

Vern Ceder is the author of the Quick Python Book, second edition. He has presented a number of times about using Python for education. Vern has also been involved in PyCon US as the originator and organizer of the poster session, a new feature of the conference added in 2010.

Rick Copeland

Rick Copeland is a programmer and the author of Essential SQLAlchemy. He has contributed to the TurboGears project and several templating languages. Rick also speaks regularly at the the Atlanta Python users' group.

Brian Curtin

Brian Curtin manages the PSF Sprints project and Python Insider, the blog for python-dev. He also participates in the program and organizing committees for PyCon US. As a core committer, Brian has helped secure and manage MSDN licenses for the core development team.

Maciej Fijalkowski

Maciej Fijalkowski is an active member of the PyPy project and one of its lead developers. He has continued to help with issues that span between PyPy and CPython. Maciej also regularly attends PyCon, speaks there, and participated in both summits and sprints.

Yannick Gingras

Yannick Gingras is the organizer for the Montreal Python user group. He introduced a Python track into the Confoo PHP conference. Yannick also contributes to the Packaging project and Django documentation translation.

Daniel Greenfeld

Danny has contributed extensively in the Django and Pinax ecosystems, and is the author of the Django Packages web system that allows people to compare and select the packages they need to build their applications. He has also been active on the PyCon Program Committee over the past two years.

Jonathan Hartley

Jonathan Hartley is a Python developer from the UK. In the last few years he has been a regular speaker at PyCon US, EuroPython, and PyCon UK. Jonathan is also involved in the London Python scene, PyWeek, and many other Python-related activities.

Philip Jenvey

Philip Jenvey is a founder of the Pylons project. He is also a core developer of Jython, CPython, and SQLAlchemy. His contributions range from implementation, recruiting developers, bug triage, advocacy, and managing the project release cycles.

Brian K. Jones

Brian K. Jones is a programmer, author, and trainer. He has delivered Python tutorials at conferences including PICC and PyCon. Brian is the co-editor, along with David Beazley, of the upcoming Python Cookbook, 3rd Edition from O'Reilly. He is the former Editor in Chief of Python Magazine, which he also created in collaboration with the publisher.

Jonathan LaCour

Jonathan LaCour has contributed to the TurboGears and Elixir projects. He also speaks regularly at PyCon. His company, ShootQ, is a Python success story.

Mike Orr

Mike Orr is a contributor on the Cheetah, Quixote, and Pylons projects. He helped found SeaPIG (the Seattle Python Interest Group) and co-leads it. Mike has also written several articles about PyCon and Python in Linux Gazette.

Fabio Pliger

Fabio Pliger is one of the founders of PyCon Italia, and is one of the head organisers for EuroPython this year, since the PyCon Italia team is running the conference. He has also contributed to other conferences and has encouraged the collaboration between Python communities in several European countries.

Ronald Oussoren

Ronald Oussoren is a core contributor to CPython. He has made significant contributions to the Mac OS port of CPython, especially through PyObjC.

Lennart Regebro

Lennart Regebro is a long time Python developer and author of the recently released Porting to Python 3. He's also a contributor to distribute and has taken a leading role in porting Zope-related packages to Python 3.

Gregory Smith

Gregory Smith is a long-time contributor to CPython. He oversaw the integration of the BerkeleyDB module into the standard library and currently contributes to the hashlib, subprocess, and unittest modules. Gregory also works on issues related to concurrency and 64-bit architectures.

Richard Taylor

Richard Taylor helps organize PyCon UK and EuroPython. He has also contributed to several projects, including kamaelia and GRAMPS. Richard was the technical reviewer for Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional

Board of Directors for 2011-2012

The members of the Python Software Foundation have re-elected all 13 members of the current Board of Directors to another term.

• Raymond Hettinger
• Steve Holden
• Marc-André Lemburg
• David Mertz
• Douglas Napoleone
• Jesse Noller
• Tim Peters
• Allison Randal
• Jeff Rush
• Greg Stein
• James Tauber
• Martin von Löwis
• Gloria Willadsen

About the Board

PSF Directors are elected annually and are responsible for managing the business of the foundation, as outlined in the bylaws. They fulfill two responsibilities:

1. Completing or overseeing administrative tasks related to the legal standing of the Foundation. These include responding to trademark or licensing queries and monitoring the Foundation's financial health.
2. Completing "special projects" such as fund raising, administering grants, and supporting day-to-day operations of the Python community.

A director's specific duties depend on the office and any sub-committee memberships held. The board meets monthly via IRC. Minutes from the meetings are available online. Most Directors are volunteers, although some Officer positions (Treasurer and Secretary) do receive a nominal salary.

Kiwi PyCon Receives US$2000

The 2011 Kiwi Python Conference was awarded a US$2,000 grant from the Python Software Foundation during the latter's March board meeting. Kiwi PyCon is the premier Python Conference of New Zealand and will by held in Wellington from August 27th through the 28th. It is organized by the New Zealand Python Users Group (NZPUG). You can register now to make sure your spot is reserved. The organizers are currently looking for proposals for talks on all aspects of Python, so you have an opportunity to get involved and submit a talk. Now is a good time for you to take that trip to New Zealand that you have always wanted!

PSF Grants EuroPython US$2000

During its March board meeting the Python Software Foundation approved a US$2,000 grant for the 2011 EuroPython Conference. EuroPython is the official European conference about the Python programming language. It will be held in Florence, Italy June 20-26. You can go to their website to register for the conference. EuroPython is an excellent excuse to visit Italy, so sign up today!

PSF Grant Funds Porting Work for the email Package

R. David Murray recently completed work funded by the PSF to update Python's email package to work with Python 3.2. The result of the project is a fully functioning version of the standard library package for parsing and constructing email messages.

Project History

The version of the email package that was shipped with Python 3.0 and 3.1 had some bugs, not the least of which was the inability to handle binary inputs. The parser was limited to files and messages in ASCII. Due to this, under Python 3 the email module could only create messages and never receive anything. This deficiency broke many applications that depend on email. For example, the cgi package uses the email package to process binary uploads.

After discussions held in the email-sig discussion group, a complete rewrite of the API was suggested as the only option and R. David Murray submitted a proposal to the PSF to fund the development of Email 6. The proposal was initially accepted, and some seed money (including matching funds) were provided. Since then, additional funding has been provided by QNX.

At first, David spent some time working on the Policy framework, and with some help from Antoine Pitrou, who fixed some issues in the nntp module, David devised a way to integrated byte handling in the email package without a complete rewrite of the original code by using extensions to the API that allow it to accept and generate bytes. The implementation used the "surrogateescape" mechanism, developed by Martin von Löwis, allowing minimum code modifications.

David also provided some modifications to smtplib, enabling it to transmit messages with non-ASCII characters. He also worked with Victor Stinner to give the cgi module the ability to handle binary data. They then took on the task of updating the mailbox module, and using the new features coded initially by David, made mailbox fully functional for Python 3.2.

David mentions that there are still some bugs, specially in the transition to the string/byte separation, but, also according to him, these bugs were greatly reduced in version 3.2.

All this work gave Python 3.2 a fully functional email handling package. The nntplib, smtplib, email, cgi and mailbox modules were also made functional, something that benefits the whole Python community. The grant provided by PSF paved the way to reach full functionality.

EuroPython 2011 Call for Presentations

The EuroPython 2011 organizers are accepting proposals for talks. They are looking for presentations on every aspect of Python, including programming from novice to advanced levels, applications and frameworks, and how you have been involved in introducing Python into your organisation.

The deadline for submissions is April 6th.

EuroPython

EuroPython is the official European conference about the Python programming language. The conference is being held June 20–26 in Florence, Italy, at the Mediterraneo Conference Centre, situated near the heart of Florence’s old city centre.

Presenting at EuroPython

The organizers will accept a broad range of presentations, from reports on academic and commercial projects to tutorials and case studies. As long as the presentation is interesting and potentially useful to the Python community, it will be considered for the program.

First-time speakers are especially welcome.

For more details about how to submit a proposal, refer to the official call for presentations on the EuroPython website.

GSOC Student Applications Open

Students who want to participate in the Google Summer of Code project this year should apply online now! The deadline for applications is April 8, but the load on the servers increases as that date approaches, so apply now to avoid the rush and make sure your application is received in time.

Google Summer of Code

Since 2005, the Python Software Foundation has been sponsoring Google Summer of Code (GSoC) projects to pair students with mentors from Python-based projects for real-world development experience. Students who are accepted into the program will spend the summer working on an open source project in Python, and be paid US$5,000 if the project is completed.

Projects

In addition to the mentors from the core Python team, several umbrella teams are already involved with the PSF for GSoC. Details about the proposed project ideas and prospective mentors can be found on the wiki.

Increasing Diversity

The PSF is committed to increasing the diversity of the Python community. One way we are working toward that goal is by encouraging women and other minorities to apply to participate in GSoC through one of the PSF-sponsored projects. The Mailman, SciPy, and PySoy projects are especially active in seeking minority applicants this year.

Important Dates

Student application deadline: 8 April

Students and Mentors paired up: 22 April

Announce accepted Students: 25 April

For more details about the schedule, see the GSoC timeline on the project web site.

Updated: The original version of this post incorrectly stated that students could earn US$4,500 instead of US$5,000.

Funding the Python Miro Community

A year ago Will Kahn-Greene started the Python Miro Community, a web-site that indexes Python-related videos regardless of where those videos exist on the Internet. The PSF has provided US$1,800 to finance continuation of this work, including US$900 for one year of Miro Community service costs. The remainder of the grant will go toward further development of the Python Miro Community.

Miro Community

The Miro Community offers an easy way to collect and curate videos already on the internet. It is one of several projects of the non-profit organization Participatory Culture Foundation all centered around supporting distribution of video content on the Internet. Among these is Universal Subtitles, a toolset and community to add subtitles to any web video.
The Python Miro Community indexes Python-related videos from many separate hosting sites on the Internet. The collection includes metadata for the videos to make them searchable and more useful to people. The site currently holds around 550 videos, covering a wide variety of Python-related topics from Python user groups, Python-related conferences like PyCon, and other sources.

Funding usage

US$900 of the grant will go towards Miro Community service costs as PCF rolls out Miro Community 1.2, which has a tiered service plan. The other US$900 of the grant will go towards improvements to Python Miro Community:

• integrate Universal Subtitles into the site
• fixing Miro Community software to allow transcriptions to be part of the search corpus
• fixing Miro Community software to allow for automated data validation

See also Will's blog on the grant and for additional information.

Minutes for Members' Meeting of March 11, 2011 Now Available

The minutes for the members' meeting at PyCon on March 11, 2011 are now available online.

SciPy 2011: Call for Papers

SciPy 2011, the 10th Python in Science conference, will be held July 11 - 16, 2011, in Austin, TX.

At this conference, novel applications and breakthroughs made in the pursuit of science using Python are presented. The conference is preceded by two days of tutorials, during which community experts provide training on several scientific Python packages.

Potential speakers are invited to take part by submitting a talk abstract at the conference website. Associated papers (optional) are included in the peer-reviewed conference proceedings, to be published online.

This year will also feature two specialized tracks, whose express aim it is to open up SciPy to the broader Python community. The first track is Python in Data Science chaired by Peter Wang, and the second is entitled Python and Core Technologies chaired by Anthony Scopatz.

Important Dates for Authors

• Friday, April 15: Tutorial proposals due (remember: stipends will be provided for Tutorial instructors)
• Sunday, April 24: Paper abstracts due
• Sunday, May 8: Student sponsorship request due
• Tuesday, May 10: Accepted talks announced
• Monday, May 16: Student sponsorships announced
• Monday, May 23: Early Registration ends
• Sunday, June 20: Papers due
• Monday-Tuesday, July 11 - 12: Tutorials
• Wednesday-Thursday, July 13 - July 14: Conference
• Friday-Saturday, July 15 - July 16: Sprints

PyCon 2011 Videos

Videos from this year's edition of PyCon are being uploaded and some are already available on Python's Miro Community page and on Blip TV. All presentations this year were of high caliber and the diversity will please everyone interested in Python. If you missed the conference, or just one or two presentations that you really wanted to see, check out the videos today!

Python-Dev Launches Python Insider Blog

The Python development team has launched a new blog.

Python Insider is the official blog of the Python core development team. It will provide a way for people who don't follow the mailing list to get an overview of topics discussed there, and especially to learn about changes in store for Python.

The announcement includes details about how to subscribe to the blog through its RSS feed, email, and Twitter.

Google Summer of Code: Call for Projects and Mentors

Since 2005, the Python Software Foundation has been sponsoring Google Summer of Code (GSoC) projects to pair students with mentors from Python-based projects for real-world development experience. We are pleased to announce that the PSF is a GSoC sponsoring organization again for 2011!

Call for Applications

The PSF is accepting proposals from different projects in the Python ecosystem. In order to qualify for PSF sponsorship, projects must be prepared to provide at least three mentors to act as guides for students over the course of the summer. Projects also need a well-defined method of team communication, such as a mailing list or dedicated IRC channel.

In addition to the mentors from the core Python team, several umbrella teams are already involved with the PSF for GSoC. They include:

• Mailman
• Mercurial
• Pyjamas
• PyLint
• PyPy
• PySoy
• Tryton

The number of student positions available for PSF projects is based on the number of project applications received during this phase of the program. So if your project could benefit from participating in GSoC, submit an application!

Students

Currently, the PSF is only accepting proposals from different projects in the Python ecosystem. However, it is never too early for students to be involved!

Students may submit to their GSoC application to the PSF from March 28th - April 8th. Please see the GSoC timeline for the complete program schedule. We encourage students to find a project they are interested in working with before the application period opens. Sending an inquiry to the project's mailing list asking where help is needed is highly recommended.

More Details

The GSoC timeline has the complete program schedule.

For more information, please refer to the PSF GSoC status page.

For further questions, please contact the PSF GSoC 2011 coordinator, Arc Riley.

Fill out an application online to have your project considered.

PyCon Australia

The PSF Board of Directors has awarded a $1500 USD grant to sponsor PyCon AU.

Date and Location

PyCon Australia 2011 will be held in Sydney on the weekend of the 20th and 21st of August in Sydney, Australia. The Call for Proposals has already been sent out.

PyCon AU

Australian Python programming enthusiasts are continuing the global PyCon tradition in Sydney. This will be the second Australian PyCon event, and the organizers anticipate 250 participants. The schedule will include dozens of presentations on topics including web programming, business applications, game development, science and mathematics, social issues, education, testing, databases, documentation and more.

More Information

For more details, refer to the PyCon AU website or mailing list.

Call for Applications: Sprint Funding

The PSF Sprints Committee has sent out a call for applications from groups who want funding to host sprints on Python-related development work.

Sprints Committee

The Sprints Committee was established in June 2010 to encourage and assist groups to come together to work on Python-related projects. The committee has successfully funded a number of sprints since it was created, and the PSF Board of Directors has recently set aside additional funding to be used for sprinting during the upcoming year.

Sprint Topics

Sprints on any topic related to Python may qualify for a grant. Groups can work on any of the interpreters (CPython, PyPy, Jython, IronPython, etc.), modules from the standard library, third-party libraries, development tools, or anything else affecting the community.

Sponsored sprints have covered topics including porting Genshi to Python 3, improvements to packaging as part of the Distribute/distutils project, and most recently, the PyPy winter sprint in Switzerland. Check out the sprints blog for more details.

Assistance

The Sprints Committee has prepared guides for sprinting on Python core and porting to Python 3 to help make your event successful. In addition to organizational support, the committee can also offer financial assistance in the form of grants.

Any sprint group can apply for a grant from to cover expenses directly related to a sprint event. That includes buying meals, renting meeting space, and other reasonable expenses. The maximum grant for an event is US$300.

If your group is interested in hosting a sprint, check out the full details of the call for applications at and contact the Sprints Committee at sprints@python.org.

Now Accepting Applications for Google Summer of Code Projects

The PSF is preparing its submission to participate in the Google Summer of Code again this year. The first step in that process is to solicit applications from projects that want to participate, and the call for submissions is now officially open.

Google Summer of Code

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) offers stipends to college students who write code for open source software projects. The program works by pairing students with mentors from participating projects to benefit both groups. Students are exposed to real-world software development practices, and the mentoring projects gain new contributors. More than 4,500 students and 4,000 mentors have participated in the program since its beginning in 2005. Contributions have come from over 85 countries around the world, making GSoC a truely global effort to improve the state of open source software.

Requirements for Participating Projects

Although any project is able to apply to participate directly in the Google Summer of Code, the application period with Google is closed for this year. Fortunately, the PSF also sponsors Python-related projects that need an umbrella organization to assist with the administration work for GSoC. In order to qualify for PSF sponsorship, projects must be prepared to provide at least three mentors to act as guides for students over the course of the summer. Projects also needs a well-defined method of team communication, such as a mailing list or dedicated IRC channel.

To submit your project for consideration, fill out the online application. More details about the PSF's involvement in GSoC is available on the 2011 Summer of Code page.

Bring the Superbowl of Python to Your Hometown

The site for PyCon 2014 and 2015 has not been set, yet. If you want your city to be considered, attend the Site Selection Meeting in the Dunwoody room at PyCon 2011 during the Sunday lunch break. Tell us why your city should be the next host of the premier Python conference in North America.

PSF Funds readthedocs.org

The PSF Board has awarded a grant of USD $840 to the Read the Docs project for twelve months of hosting fees.

Read the Docs

Created by Eric Holscher, Charles Leifer, and Bobby Grace, readthedocs.org is a documentation hosting site born out of the 2010 Django Dash competition. The site monitors git, Mercurial, and Subversion source repositories and automatically builds a project's documentation using Sphinx. Users can also create documentation directly through the site using a built-in editor.

The code for Read the Docs is itself open source, and contributions from users and other interested parties are always welcome.

More Details

The original announcement of the site describes the background for the project and its motivation.

Eric's presentation at PDX Python in February 2011 includes details about the tools used to build the site.

The Getting Started Guide covers all of the details you need to add the documentation for your project to the site.

Call for submissions for promotional brochure

A new PSF project aims to create professional quality promotional material about Python. The first goal is to create a brochure to showcase the many ways Python is used. It will include use cases to highlight the ways the language allows users to accomplish their tasks both in educational and in professional settings.

Project team members Marc-André Lemburg, Jan Ulrich Hasecke, and Armin Stross-Radschinski created this Plone marketing brochure for the German Zope User Group. It is the inspiration for this new project.

Community feedback and awareness is vitally important for the success of this initiative, mainly to gather information to be used in the brochure. We are especially looking for interesting projects that can be discussed as use-cases.

If you have any suggestions for information to include in the brochure, please contact Marc-André Lemburg or send an email to brochure AT getpython DOT info.

UPDATE: more information about the brochure, including a newsletter, can be found here.