Gittip is a community of people building the Commons. This is the second post in a series called “Back the Stack,” where we highlight free software developers whom you can support through Gittip.
This post is by Alex Clark, founder of PythonPackages.com.
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Hi, my name is Alex Clark and I am an open source developer. I quit my day job in 2004 to do Plone CMS consulting (Python-based web content management system), and have not looked back. Since then I have organized monthly user group meetings for the Python community in DC, organized an international developer conference in 2008 for the Plone CMS community, formed a non-profit organization to promote the interests of the DC Python community, written a book about the Plone CMS focusing on zc.buildout based development and deployment, and have remained gainfully self-employed.
PythonPackages.com started in October 2011 as a commercial venture to fund all of my open source activities. Since then, it has been featured on Startup Row at PyCon 2012 (thank you, PyCon!), has helped drive the addition of OAuth support to the Python Package Index (hat tip to Richard Jones), and has helped me make dozens of open source Python package releases for the Plone CMS community. I hope it can help others package and release their Python software quickly and easily, in a manner consistent with today’s fast-paced-development-integration-and-deployment- environment, powered by global leaders like GitHub and Travis CI.
Enter: Gittip. Chad’s vision for Gittip really speaks to me. All over the world there are thousands of open source developers writing code, managing projects, and moving the world of open source technology forward. This helps millions of individuals, companies and the entire world with a variety of its endeavours. What if those folks could easily show their appreciation to individuals known to make open source happen? What if these volunteer developers didn’t need to go get “day jobs” to make a living because the world has taken care of them? What if companies didn’t need to hire employees in the traditional sense because their needs have already been met by open source? There is a lot to think about and strive for here, and I’m really excited to help Chad with his mission. On a daily basis I’m involved with, and influential to the following open source projects: Plone (Python-based CMS), Pillow (Python Imaging Library fork), Buildout (Python-based build system), and more. I hope Gittip can help me help you, the open source community and the world.
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Click here to support Alex Clark on Gittip.
Photo Credit: Eddie Welker