Revisiting Django Built to Last
About 18 months ago, I wrote a post called Django Built to Last. This year’s DjangoCon US seems to echo some of the statements I made in it.
In the post, I claimed that Django’s two core values are:
- Community
- Reliability
There were several talks about community. There was a keynote on it by Mario Munoz, Sage Abdullah said it changed his life, on the deep dive day it was mentioned in the first three talks. Peter Grandstaff, the conference chair, highlighted the importance of taking care of one another. The closing panel of the conference was revolved around community.
The conference also mentioned reliability. Jacob Kaplan-Moss talked about various ways we can help the DSF move to the next level, Will Vincent highlighted the vigorous discussions about the user model, Carlton Gibson discussed how Django simply just works allowing a start-up to move to a GVP (Geniunely Viable Product) quickly and reliably, and Natalia Bidart’s keynote on what a fellow does illuminated the vast range of checks and review that go into Django.
Yet somehow, there was a common thread throughout the conference that indicated we are struggling with both. There’s a need for new maintainers in the Django ecosystem (reliability) and that we will need to mentor contributors into those roles (community). Interestingly, succession plans were mentioned almost immediately during the Black Python Devs Leadership Summit and seemed to be reiterated throughout the week.
What excites me is that people have been taking action to resolve this. Djangonaut Space has been helping bring new contributors into the ecosystem. Jeff Triplett has been hosting office hours, providing a safe space for community discussions. Django had four Google Summer of Code projects this year, creating several new significant contributors. Django Commons launched, creating a community-driven collective of open-source python and Django packages. Recently, Carlton Gibson has started a mentorship discussion group. And these are just the things that have crossed my feed.
It’s clear there is a wave of momentum in the community right now. What isn’t clear is how long it will last.
My question is, do we try to direct the wave to propel us to what we know or do we ride the wave, letting it take us to someplace new?