Announcing: Python Sprint Sponsorship

May 20th, 2010 § 8 comments § permalink

Oth­er­wise known as “from psf import sprints”.

Awhile ago, I started won­der­ing if there was a way that the Python Soft­ware Foun­da­tion (the PSF) could reach out, and help encour­age python devel­op­ment a lit­tle bit more than it cur­rently does (it actu­ally does a lot of stuff). I then spent a fair amount of time think­ing about core con­tri­bu­tion, and ways of get­ting peo­ple not just to become con­trib­u­tors to say, python-core, but also to the “ecosys­tem” of big-P-Python. It’s part of my job now that I vol­un­teered to be on the PSF Board.

Then, a few weeks ago, I asked the ques­tion — “Why aren’t you con­tribut­ing (to python)?” — that post alone got my lit­tle blog here about 30,000 hits in around 48 hours. Pretty impres­sive for navel gaz­ing (not even con­tro­ver­sial navel gaz­ing, at that). In the days fol­low­ing that post, I’ve had a lot of pub­lic and pri­vate dis­cus­sions with peo­ple about var­i­ous ways to help improve things, what could work, what wouldn’t work, etc.

One thing has been stuck in my head — sprints — sprints are places where a bunch of pro­gram­mers and hack­ers of all skill lev­els, sit in a room and work on a par­tic­u­lar code domain, it could be a web­site, it could be python bugs, it could be a mod­ule, library, or any­thing, really. The point is get­ting a bunch of peo­ple together in a room, feed them, water them and enable the hacking.

And finally — there’s Python 3.

Python 3 is a bit of an inter­est­ing ani­mal — and while it is the future of the lan­guage, and a much brighter one at that, the rate at which peo­ple are port­ing to Python 3 is a lit­tle slower than many of us would like. Port­ing libraries to Python 3 can be rel­a­tively sim­ple, but it can also be bor­ing, tedious and require men­tor­ship and guidance.

Given these itches of mine — I’ve decided to try to find (or at least, start the for­mu­la­tion) of a cure. A few weeks ago, I approached the rest of the Python Soft­ware Foun­da­tion board, and pre­sented them with a “spon­sored sprint” pro­posal. The short ver­sion being that the PSF would spin up a com­mit­tee which would accept and eval­u­ate sprint pro­pos­als from the world as a whole, and give each sprint a rel­a­tively set amount of money.

The sprints them­selves are rel­a­tively focused — Python-core, the Python web­site, docs, bugs — and finally, port­ing Python 2 libraries to Python 3.

So — all of that said, I’m offi­cially pub­licly announc­ing the new pro­gram. I’m still work­ing on ini­tial com­mit­tee mem­ber­ship, and putting together things like the mail­ing list, but I will soon be announc­ing a call for appli­ca­tions. Below, you will find the full pro­posal — please feel free to post com­ments, or send me pri­vate email (jnoller at python dot org) about ques­tions or con­cerns. If you want to help — please please con­tact me — I can not pos­si­bly make this a suc­cess on my own.

“from python import sprint“

This pro­posal out­lines a global “focused sprint” ini­tia­tive for the Python com­mu­nity (includ­ing Python core). The ini­tia­tive out­lined in this pro­posal is designed to help raise both the pro­file of the PSF, while also encour­ag­ing com­mu­nity, Python 3 adop­tion, and pos­si­ble python-core con­tri­bu­tions. This pro­posal does not iden­tify any sort of return on invest­ment or profit for the foun­da­tion; nor does it attempt to iden­tify met­rics of suc­cess. The suc­cess of this pro­posal is deter­mined by the social “buzz”, patches, new con­trib­u­tors, etc. We hope that this will nat­u­rally raise the aware­ness of the PSF, as well as bring­ing in an over­all more diverse con­trib­u­tor group.

This pro­posal sug­gests that the PSF-Board approves the fol­lowing:

  • A small monthly fund, to a max­i­mum of 400 USD per month (to a project max­i­mum of 5000 USD), for “spon­sored” sprints, this fund will be allo­cated by the project committee.
  • Cre­ation of a “Sprint Com­mit­tee” — the pur­pose of which is the allo­ca­tion of the project funds to sprint coor­di­na­tors, review­ing and approval of sprint appli­ca­tions, and inter­nal and exter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions. This com­mit­tee is part of, and acts on the behalf of, the Python Soft­ware Foundation.

Focus of the sprints are:

  • Python Core bug triage and patch sub­mis­sion (on-boarding new contributors)
  • Python Core doc­u­men­ta­tion (includ­ing process doc­u­men­ta­tion) improvements
  • Port­ing libraries/applications to Python 3
  • Python website/wiki con­tent improvements
  • PyPI pack­ag­ing host­ing site improvements
  • Con­tri­bu­tion to other “core” projects, such as pack­ag­ing related issues.

Com­mit­tee Outline:

  • The “Sprint Com­mit­tee” will be formed of one or more PSF-Board mem­bers, PSF Mem­bers, and pos­si­bly exter­nal volunteers.
  • A blog and/or web­site will be started by the com­mit­tee for the exter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tion and “show­cas­ing” of sprints which have occurred.
  • The com­mit­tee will be respon­si­ble for the coor­di­na­tion and review and approval of sprint proposals.
  • The committee’s head/lead will be respon­si­ble for monthly reports to the PSF-Board.
  • A “Sprint Bun­dle” includ­ing the fol­low­ing items will be cre­ated, by the com­mit­tee and other volunteers:
    • “Sprint Guide”, meant to serve as a how-to for coach­ing sprints
    • “Begin­ners Guide to Python Core work”, meant to act as hand­out mate­r­ial for sprint participants
    • “Begin­ners Guide to Port­ing to Python 3″, meant to act as hand­out mate­r­ial for sprint participants
    • “Begin­ners Guide to the Python Web­site”, meant to act as hand­out mate­r­ial for help­ing out with the web­site, for sprint participants
    • A page on the Python Wiki will be ded­i­cated for free form “lessons learned from pre­vi­ous sprints” so that par­tic­i­pants may pro­vide advice to future participants.
  • Note: The PSF-Members list will be solicited for vol­un­teers and com­mit­tee mem­bers to help with this ini­tia­tive and gen­er­a­tion of col­lat­eral. Addi­tion­ally, mem­bers will be asked to be ini­tial Sprint Lead­ers, or Sprint Coach points of contact/facilitator. In other words, some­one to help with issues such as the python bug tracker, and other domains.
  • Note: As needed for legal rea­sons, the Com­mit­tee may use an inter­me­di­ary entity to donate funds to local user groups.

Sprint Details:

  • 1–2 Pro­pos­als per month are tar­geted for approval. If the fund is increased either by the PSF, or exter­nal dona­tions, then the num­ber of sprints may be increased keep­ing the tar­get of ~200USD per sprint (e.g. More smaller ones).
  • The require­ments of the pro­posal would be:
    • Loca­tion
    • Num­ber of participants
    • What the focus and goals of the sprint are (e.g. core con­tri­bu­tion; port­ing a project to Python 3, web­site content)
  • As part of being approved, the sprint leads/coaches agree that they will deliver a report (hope­fully, with pic­tures!) of the sprint to the Sprint Com­mit­tee, for dis­tri­b­u­tion on the Sprint Team’s and/or the PSF’s blog and websites.
  • Expenses will be han­dled post-facto. Unless a sprint lead specif­i­cally requests fund­ing in advance, they will be asked to sub­mit receipts and they will be reim­bursed in a timely man­ner (as soon as possible).
  • The plan­ning, and exe­cu­tion are the sole respon­si­bil­ity of the sprint coordinator/proposer. The PSF, nor the com­mit­tee, will exe­cute or directly plan any sprints.

Notes:

  • Sta­tus of the ini­tia­tive will be pro­vided to the board at each PSF Board Meet­ing by Pri­mary Coordinator.
  • PSF spon­sors, or other exter­nal com­pa­nies, will be allowed (pos­si­bly solicited) to donate into this fund. If fund­ing is pro­vided exter­nally, that addi­tional fund­ing will be used, if inter­est and appli­ca­tions per­mit, to host more sprints per month rather than return­ing money to the PSF.
  • The scope of the solicited sprints — namely, Python 3 port­ing, core and web­site work — may be expanded to other projects or ini­tia­tive upon approval from the PSF Board, and only by the PSF Board. If the scope is expanded, the mem­ber­ship will be noti­fied accord­ingly. Note that this may require addi­tional mate­ri­als to be made available.
    • Such expan­sions may include a Django sprint, a Twisted sprint, etc.
  • We may be able to solicit (from the mem­ber­ship) the cre­ation of a bare-bones ded­i­cated web­site with a blog and news updates for this project.

 

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