Python programming: PyPl is getting this ‘most requested’ feature

The maintainers of popular Python programming language are on the hunt for developers to build a new feature for the Python Package Index (PyPI) in the form of organization accounts.

Python’s importance to today’s tech can’t be overstated. It has become the go-to language for machine learning, in part because of its wealth of software libraries like NumPy.  

Thanks to those libraries, Python is now arguably the world’s most popular programming language, jostling for top spot with Java, C, and JavaScript, and it’s used by millions of developers, data scientists and finance workers worldwide to crunch big data. 

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PyPl is where developers get these libraries from and the Python Software Foundation (PSF) is now on the hunt for two developers to add a new feature. It has about 350,000 libraries and has been free since 2000, a decade after Guido van Rossum released it.  

There are about 30 million developers around the world, but anyone using Python would know and use PyPl. It’s a free service that’s maintained by Python Core contributors, but its future includes a paid-for option targeting the many enterprise organizations that use Python. 

Python’s Wikipedia entry says there are 2.5 billion monthly active users of Python, which makes it as big a platform as Windows and Android. 

PSF is now embarking on “organization accounts”, targeting enterprise. 

“We hope to provide organization accounts as a paid service to companies and complimentary access to community projects. The organization account feature will provide the structure based on which new features can be offered to paying customers,” PSF says. 

There will be value-adds to the paid-for service over the free version. PSF says the project hopes to allow “PyPI users to set up an organization account, invite other users to join, organize those users into teams, and manage ownership and permissions across multiple projects.”

The move to develop organization accounts followed a survey of Python users last year in which they were the most requested PyPl feature.

When the results were published in December 2021, the PSF said any feature targeted at organization or community projects will require organization accounts to manage the feature. “Hence, it makes sense to develop organization accounts first. This feature will allow organizations to manage multiple users and multiple packages.”

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The PSJ noted at the time that organizations accounts will be offered on a subscription basis, saying: “Private organizations will be charged a fixed amount while community projects will avail this feature free of cost.”

PSF is offering up to US $98,000 to developers for around 560 hours of work for a contractor. It wants work to start by early April and ca be performed remotely.  

The organization accounts will add another source of revenues for the language, whose foundation currently relies mostly on its annual conference. Other sources include Python trademark licensing.