Congratulations to Fernando Perez, Recipient of FSF’s Advancement of Free Software Award

On Saturday March 23, Dr. Fernando Perez was presented the Free Software Foundation’s annual Award for the Advancement of Free Software for his work on IPython. The award “is given annually to an individual who has made a great contribution to the progress and development of free software, through activities that accord with the spirit of free software.”

Fernando, who was elected to the PSF in 2010, received the award at LibrePlanet 2013, which took place at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He dedicated the award to the late John Hunter, creator of matplotlib, who passed away last August. John was posthumously awarded the Foundation’s Distinguished Service Award.

The Foundation congratulates Fernando on his great work on IPython and his efforts all around the community!

For more information, see the FSF’s announcement: https://www.fsf.org/news/2012-free-software-award-winners-announced-2

Farewell Malcolm

While we celebrated the Python community last week at PyCon, we quietly lost one of our own. Malcolm Tredinnick, core Django developer and longtime member of the PSF passed away this past weekend.

Malcolm embodied the type of ideals that we all strive for in the Python community. He was known both for his code and for his kindness, for his intelligence and his humanity. Malcolm was a regular in the #django channel on IRC. It might have been intimidating to new users to be chatting with the author of the Django ORM, but he always took the time to put people at ease and answer their questions.

We are grateful to have known Malcolm. We will miss him.

As Barbara Shaurette wrote:

"""
I encourage everyone to honor Malcolm's memory by following his example.

Submit that patch for a Django ORM ticket that you've putting off for a while.

Go into #django and help some new users.

Answer questions. Be nice.
"""

Memorial page on Storify
Official announcement on the Django website

Python Software Foundation Reaches Settlement, Ends Trademark Dispute

via Marketwire

The Python Software Foundation has reached a settlement in its recent trademark dispute with PO Box Hosting Limited trading as Veber in Europe. The issue centered around Veber's use of the Python name for their cloud hosting services and their application for a figurative trademark incorporating the word "Python". While the Foundation retains the trademark for Python within the United States, it did not have a filing within the European Union. According to the terms of the settlement, Veber has withdrawn its trademark filing and has agreed to support the Python Software Foundation's use of the term.

The amicable agreement reached between the two sides will result in a rebranding of Veber's Python cloud server and backup services, which continue to be available at http://www.veber.co.uk. Veber will rebrand the Python services later under a yet to be determined name.

"We are happy to come to an agreement with Veber," said Van Lindberg, chairman of the Python Software Foundation. "What the PSF wants most is to support the global community of Python developers. To Veber's credit, they were willing to recognize the Python brand without protracted negotiations. We are grateful for Veber's support and we wish them luck in their business."

Tim Poultney, Managing Director of PO Box Hosting and Veber, said, "Veber are pleased to have reached a speedy and amicable agreement with the Python Software Foundation. The use of the Python name for our cloud server and backup business has ceased with the services now available in Europe from Veber. This agreement will remove potential confusion between the Python software language and our cloud services business."

The Foundation thanks the Python community for their immense outpouring of support throughout the dispute, both financially and through the letter writing campaign undertaken by organizations across European Union member states.

Get ready for Google Summer of Code

Python project contributors and student enthusiasts, mark your calendars: Google Summer of Code applications open soon!

Google Summer of Code is an annual, global program pairing student developers with mentors in open source projects for paid summer internships.

You can learn more about this year's Google Summer of Code here.

Python projects

Python serves as an umbrella organization for around a dozen open source Python projects each year. Last year Python core, mailman, Pandas, PyGame, Pylons, PySide, PySoy, scikit-learn, statsmodels, Tryton, and Twisted participated.

If your Python project is interested in participating in Google Summer of Code under the Python umbrella, it's time to start preparing your applications:

1. Tell the Python Google Summer of Code coordinators that your project wants to participate! Follow the instructions on the Python wiki.
2. Review last year's projects and their idea pages.
3. Start outlining candidate student projects. Good student projects are detailed, can be broken down into step-by-step goals, and are realistic in scope and difficulty for a 3-month student intern.
4. Start gathering mentors. We recommend that each student have both a primary and backup mentor.

Important deadlines

• March 18: Mentoring organizations can begin submitting applications to Google.
• March 29: Mentoring organization application deadline.

Students

Google Summer of Code is a paid summer internship program for college/university students who will be 18 years of age or older on May 27, 2013. Participating in Google Summer of Code is a great way to develop real-world software engineering skills while giving back to an open source Python project you love.

Read more about eligibility in the FAQ.

If you are interested in participating in Google Summer of Code under the Python umbrella, it's time to start exploring potential projects and practicing the tools of open source development:

1. Read the Python Google Summer of Code guidelines.
2. Review last year's projects and their idea pages.
3. Start practicing the tools of open source development, including:
   
   • IRC
   • a revision control system like git or svn
   • the diff and patch utilities
   • bug trackers

If you've never used some of these tools before, don't worry! You have plenty of time to practice. A good resource for getting familiar with these tools is the OpenHatch training missions.

Important deadlines

• April 8: List of accepted mentoring organizations published on theGoogle Summer of Code 2013 site.
• April 9 - 21: Student applicants discuss application ideas with mentoring organizations.
• April 22: Student application period opens.
• May 3: Student application deadline.

Note that the best way to boost your chances of being accepted for Google Summer of Code is to start contributing to a project before you apply. If you have questions about how to get started or just want some friendly encouragement, visit the OpenHatch project and say hello.

Introducing Electronic Contributor Agreements

We're happy to announce the new way to file a contributor agreement: on the web at http://www.python.org/psf/contrib/contrib-form/.

Through the use of Adobe's EchoSign, we got rid of the old hand-written, print out, scan or photograph, then fax or email of your form. It was a hassle for our contributors, and a hassle for our administrators. Faxes fail, mail gets lost, and sometimes pictures or scans turn out poorly. It was time to find a more user-friendly solution, and the Foundation is happy to finally offer this electronic form.

The new form is easy to fill out right on the site, guiding you through each of the required fields such as your name, bug tracker ID, address, and initial license. If you're signing the form on behalf of an organization, there's a check box to specify this, and then you are asked near the bottom to state your title in the organization. Lastly, your signature is either generated from your typed name, or you can draw your own or upload a signature file of your own.

Once you submit the form, you'll receive an email from echosign.com to verify the email address you entered. Once you click to confirm your address, the form will be emailed to the PSF and will be recorded.

We require all contributors to CPython to have a signed form, and we hope this makes it easier for potential contributors to join up and help make Python better. It's available just in time for PyCon and the CPython sprint that will be occurring March 18 through 21 in Santa Clara, California. Join us at the sprint, sign your contributor form, and help us fix some bugs or add some features!