A new chapter for PyPy: Transitioning away from a Charitable Model

[Deb Nicholson]

Conservancy Winds Down Its Involvement in PyPy

URL:https://sfconservancy.org/news/2020/aug/12/pypy-transition/

PyPy has been a member project of Software Freedom Conservancy since
2010 and although it's been a mutually successful partnership, nothing
lasts forever — especially in software. Today, Conservancy and PyPy
announce that they are winding down their ten year relationship. PyPy
will remain free software, but the community's structure and
organizational underpinnings will change. Conservancy provides a fiscal
and organizational home for projects that find the freedoms and
assurances that come along with a charitable home advantageous for
their community goals. While this framework was a great fit for the
early PyPy community, that community has changed such that this is no
longer the case. PyPy's leadership are exploring non-charitable options
for its next phase of growth.

PyPy joined Conservancy shortly after the release of PyPy 1.2, the
first version to contain a fully functional JIT. In 2013, PyPy started
supporting ARM, bringing its just-in-time speediness to many more
devices and also began working toward supporting NumPy to help
scientists crunch their numbers faster. Together, PyPy and Conservancy
ran successful fundraising drives and facilitated payment and oversight
for contractors and code sprints. Conservancy has supported PyPy's
impressive growth as they expanded support for different hardware and
inclusion of new modules and added support for Python 3 as the
underlying language itself evolved. Over the years, with Conservancy's
help, PyPy paid nine contractors over $220,000 to work on many
important issues.

On behalf of the PyPy community, Simon Cross and Carl Friedrich Bolz-
Tereick commented "PyPy would like to thank Conservancy for their
decade long support in building the community and wishes Conservancy
continued success in their journey promoting, improving, developing and
defending free and open source software."

"We are happy that Conservancy was able to help PyPy bring important
software for the public good during a critical time in its history,"
said Karen Sandler, Conservancy's Executive Director. "We wish the
community well and look forward to seeing it develop and succeed in new
ways."

In order to make good use of the generous donations made by stalwart
PyPy enthusiasts over the years, Conservancy and PyPy together made a
plan to fund critical improvements to PyPy over the last year. By
working with independent experts, Conservancy and PyPy prioritized work
that made PyPy better for everyone. We thank Simon Cross Elana Hashman
and Jean-Paul Calderone for volunteering to help steer that work.
Conservancy has helped PyPy with the transition and assisting with its
remaining charitable obligations.

About PyPy and Conservancy

PyPy is a multi-layer python interpreter with a built-in JIT compiler
that runs Python quickly across different computing environments.

Conservancy is a resourceful, non-profit organization dedicated to
helping people take control of their computing experience by growing
the software freedom movement, supporting community-driven alternatives
to proprietary software and defending free software builders with
practical initiatives. Conservancy believes that the future of software
should be for everyone. 


-- 
Deb Nicholson <deb at sfconservancy.org>
Software Freedom Conservancy