Python Software Foundation: Mozilla and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are funding pip with $407,000

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  • December 9, 2019
Technology

As the Python Software Foundation (PSF) announced in a blog post, it is receiving $207,000 USD from Mozilla via the Mozilla Open Source Support Award and $200,000 USD from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) as Essential Open Source Software for Science grant.

The funds are designated to support a three-phased working plan for pip in 2020 to make the package installer “easier for people to use and troubleshoot”, and here’s what’s going to happen.

SEE ALSO: Python is on its way to become the top programming language of 2019

Roadmap for pip in 2020

The detailed roadmap that outlines three phases was added to the Python Wiki.

  • Phase I will take place in early 2020 and consist of foundational work.
  • Phase II is referred to as resolver work, planned from March to June 2020.
  • Phase III is set to take place from June to December 2020 and will focus on maintenance and sustainability work.

This is what the specific funds will pay for:

Mozilla’s funds of $207,000 will be used for five months of Python development work as well as initial user experience research and design work. The Python development plans include taking care of open issues, bugs and pull requests, but also working on other aspects such as the dependency resolver or refactoring build logic. The research and design work means reading bug reports and posts, interviewing users, running user tests and more.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s $200,000 contribution will fund twelve months of Python development, test infrastructure and project maintenance, four months of Phase III user experience research and design work, and certain travel costs for PyCon North America.

Funds of both sources will go into project management, which includes planning, testing and communicating with stakeholders, as well as PSF administrative work.

See the PSF blog post by Sumana Harihareswara for more information on the future pip plans and their funding.

Mozilla Open Source Support awards

The Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) awards program is run by the Mozilla Corporation, which selects the recipients—open source projects, such as software, hardware and firmware, but not conferences or events. As the website states, the awards are “administered in part by the Mozilla Foundation, the nonprofit owner of the Mozilla Corporation”.

MOSS awards applicants do not need to adhere to a certain deadline, and processing of applications takes up to two months. The awards usually range between between $5,000 and $150,000 USD, with previous awardees including Tor, Godot and SecureDrop.

SEE ALSO: Python is on its way to become the top programming language of 2019

Essential Open Source Software for Science

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) was founded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and pediatrician Priscilla Chan. The couple’s initiative offers a number of different grants, one of which is the Essential Open Source Software for Science grant. It is aimed at open source software projects “that are essential to biomedical research”—and as the PSF points out, Python is the basis of many scientific tools.

The first 32 grants to 42 open source software projects, announced last month, include many Python-written tools as well as the popular Python library Matplotlib. Applications can be handed in during three cycles per year, the next one starting on December 16, 2019.

The post Python Software Foundation: Mozilla and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are funding pip with $407,000 appeared first on JAXenter.

Source : JAXenter

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