For a little background, can you describe the general topic of your presentation and tell us what is new in the last few months?
PyPy is a toolchain for generating virtual machines for dynamic languages, which uses partial evaluation techniques to do type inference. It was an EU Funded Sixth Framework IST project, which has sucessfully 'accomplished or surpassed' all of the goals the EU had for it.
We will explain to you what this means, and why you should care about it. It's also Free Software -- released under the MIT license.
Can you give a summary of what you will present? Why should someone choose to come to your presentation?
People should come because they are curious about langauge design or because they have a particular dynamic language they would like to speed up (via our JIT) or whose behaviour they would like to change in some way.
Similar to what you can do in Ruby?
You cannot do anything like this in Ruby. We are meeting with Ruby developers now, expecially the JRuby developer Charles Nutter of Sun. This is a completely new paradigm, way more flexible, and way more powerful. Powerful enough that writing a Ruby front end to our engine is seriously being discussed at Sun by Tim Bray who would like for us to do it. See his blog about us.
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2007/11/08/PyPy
Then Ruby developers could get the benefit of our toolchain, and in particular our JIT, ``for free´´ -- since it is generated and not written by hand. This is cutting-edge computer science research which has produced something that has never been done before.
How did you get involved in Free Software and in what way is it
important to you?
I predate it. It was only with the rise of the PC that software became a commodity that was sold like cans of coke. Before that pretty much everybody but hardware manufacturers acted like free software developers.
So in a sense we are all going back to computings early days.
I've known RMS and Eric Raymond from before there was Free Software (or Open Source Software which came later).
We've been friends for longer than the movement. I've been promoting Free and Open Source software for as long as there has been any to promote, and the idea of 'sharing your software' for as long as I've been writing and using software.
My company, founded in 2001, is employee-owned and has a constitution. This is a list of the non-financial goals of the founders, and is a very good idea to have so your company doesn't lose its soul as it succeeds.
[The constitution can be found below]
Do you think this is the preferred way to do business when
developing Free Software?
There are lots of ways to develop free software, and to get paid for doing so, and what works depends on a lot of factors. I would be happy to discuss this informally with anybody.
If you mean 'do I think that all companies should be employee-owned, with a constitution, and with an explicit goal of 'making this a good place to work' -- oh yes.
How would you describe Open Ends relationship to the Python community?
We're well-known for our contributions to the Python community. We're a corporate sponsor of the Python Software Foundation, and individual members of Open End -- myself and Samuele Pedroni -- have the honour to be voted members of PSF. Samuele and I are also members of the Europython Society, which organises the annual European Python conference.
Is there any other particular presentation you'll be going to?
Why is that topic of interest?
Open Moko. Because I want to hack my phone.
We're currently seeing GNU/Linux being placed in smaller
devices, e.g a mobile phone. What's next?
Wearable computing. Linux in your shirt is coming. This is not a joke.
Read in an interview that you think it's nice that Python doesn't have the curly braces. Don't you ever miss them?
No, and if you start programming something in python you won't either. It is typical to stop wanting braces after about 90 minutes of solidly hacking. But Eric Raymond hit that point on 20 minutes. see his article 'Why Python': http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3882
Constitution
The tasks of AB Open End, as defined by the owners of the company are:
- To build a highly flexible and dynamic platform for the handling of
documents and workflow in a real-time environment.
- To market the platform and to ensure that applications based on the platform are developed and marketed on a world-wide scale, thereby creating a successful and profitable business.
The owners of AB Open End have a number of ethically based constraints on the operation of the company. We believe these constraints are important in the building of a successful and sustainable business.
These ethical constraints are:
To promote a better working environment for the employees
- through promotion of creativity and innovative ideas
- through recruitment of exceptionally talented people
- through the application of the best methods and the best tools in the field
- through openness in internal and external communication
- through partnership in the wealth accumulation of the company
To make the Open End Group known as a dependable player in the market
- through the delivery of quality products and services
- through sustaining innovation and creativity as the focus of the company changes
- through a high profile in computer science research
To promote OpenSource
- through usage of such software where appropriate
- through contributions of code where it does not conflict with our
business interests
- through financing of suitable OpenSource projects, where these would further the business of the company
