As the Chair of the Python Software Foundation Board of Directors, I want to share my immense gratitude and excitement for the Director of Python Software Foundation Infrastructure, Ee Durbin, our
Executive Director, Deb Nicholson, PyPI staff on the launch of PyPI Organizations.
This milestone represents much more than just a new set of features. It establishes a crucial new revenue stream for the Foundation at a time where the entire open source ecosystem has seen a shudder of corporate support. There has not been a shudder in Python language use seen by the incredible number of package installs. In the past year alone, PyPI served over 235 billion downloads for nearly 450,000 projects.
PyPI is a testament to the fantastic things open source can do, and more importantly there are fantastic **people** who work towards this fantastic mission. PyPI was not VC backed like npm, but I would be remise to not congratulate all involved in Fastly's sponsorship of CDN resources to PyPI over the last ten years, and committing to five more this past May 2024. But if the hype of the language says anything, I think it says that Python has a long and promising road ahead. Let's celebrate the people who push the technology forward and the values that fosters the community from which we benefit. I cheer them on. I'm asking the community to cheer them too!
I have had the pleasure of getting to know the PyPI staff over the past three years as Chair, but before my time on the board, when I was bright-eyed and bushy tailed (some would argue not much different than I am now) and before I even knew what exactly they were showing me, I had a friendly zoom tour and history lesson with Ee about what was once called the "Cheese Shop." Named after a Monty Python joke like the language, the volunteer project released in 2003 is what we now call the Python Package Index. The most critical tools (pip, setuptools and PyPI) for a time was maintained by 1 core maintainer. The journey of growth, professionalization, and polish of the Python Software Foundation over twenty plus years is a shared success among all of the past volunteers and staff to today. Our community has benefitted from the leadership of our Executive Director, Deb Nicholson, in our non profit mission to support the Python language and its thriving community. I wasn't privy most of the conversations to make this happen, which is by design; our brilliant staff have taken the directives and needs of the community, the requests of the board and served as flyweights for the interests of the community.
The Python Software Foundation is a success story for what open source foundations can do.
This huge occasion has also come in the wake of the new PEP for the Python Packaging Council, PEP 772, drafted in January. The Python Software Foundation is working with community to meet a need that came up to gather users and maintainers to cover sticky points in execution in 2023.
I am celebrating the sustainable future I see in the Python community. As one of the most popular programming language in the world for another year, the language of choice for the AI hype wave, the growing movement to support the Python as 1st class runtime everywhere (browser, edge, IoT, embedded systems) and the "write once, deploy everywhere," dream becoming more and more realistic; Python is front and center with its Wonderfully Welcoming community.
Peace, Love & Data,
DW