[Twisted-Python] Re: Evangelism notes...

[Michael Hudson]

Anthony Baxter <anthony at interlink.com.au> writes:

> On Thursday 05 May 2005 09:57, Christopher Armstrong wrote:
>> To respond to your question, glyph, the only thing I can imagine
>> helping Twisted a significant amount right now is if some company
>> employing a Twisted hacker would give that Twisted hacker half a day a
>> week to *generally* maintain Twisted. Just those 4.5 focussed hours a
>> week would help an amazing amount, I reckon. Not just working on the
>> web site and docs, but the code as well, like fixing bugs in the
>> tracker. Of course, most of those companies that employ us do pay us
>> for developing certain contributions to Twisted, but that's not really
>> benefitting the project as a whole, it's just benefitting very small
>> niches within it.
>>
>> Unfortunately, all of the companies employing Twisted hackers (Divmod,
>> Nunatak, ITA, and some others) are either too poor or don't care
>> enough about Twisted to make that offer.
>
> That's going to be a really hard thing to find. For instance, as far as I'm 
> aware, there's no-one being paid to work on Python - I spend a small amount 
> of work time on it, but certainly nowhere near half a day a week. 

I understand that Guido has a certain amount of Python time written
into his contract, but much of this is spent attending conferences and
so on.

Python appears to have more worker bees than Twisted who do the kind
of general work radix was asking for, despite none of them being paid
to do it; this is probably mostly a function of just being a bigger,
more visible project (after all, every Twisted user is a Python user).

> (I generally take a half day or day off when it comes to cutting a
> release).  If we can't find companies to fund work on Python (a
> much, much more visible project, with a whole pile of companies
> relying on it) I don't hold out much chance for someone funding
> Twisted as a whole.

Of course, the PSF has a certain amount of money and while none of it
has been spent directly on Python so far, some of it has gone on
producing training material (for scientists).  I personally doubt that
the PSF would find funding the production of such material
sufficiently in line with its interests but if noone asks, we'll never
knows.

Cheers,
mwh

-- 
  <Aardappel> this "I hate c++" is so old
  <dash> it's as old as C++, yes
                                                -- from Twisted.Quotes