Django

On November 16, 2017, the DSF made a call for Django Fellow applicants. On behalf of the Django Software Foundation, the DSF Fellowship Committee is pleased to announce Carlton Gibson as the newest Django Fellow. Carlton is joining Tim Graham who ... [More] recently announced his scale back of hours. Tim will be transitioning to part-time but remaining as a Fellow. Carlton has been involved in the Django community since 2009. He has been a core team member of the Django REST Framework for several years. He's a major contributor to Django Filter, Django Crispy Forms and Django AppConf as well as Django Compressor and many others. He is also an instructor for Django Girls in Barcelona. The DSF received 15 applicants, all of which were reviewed by the Fellowship Committee before coming to a consensus decision on Carlton. The level of talent and professionalism in the applicant pool made the decision process a difficult one. We are grateful for all who applied and their desire to participate in this important initiative. The Fellowship program has been a great success for the past three years and is only possible through generous support of the Django Software Foundation. If you or your organization benefit from Django and the work of the Fellowship program, please consider a donation. Every dollar amount, large or small, makes an impact. [Less]

The DSF membership elected a new board last month. The six elected directors of the DSF for 2018 are (in alphabetical order): James Bennett Rebecca Conley Anna Makarudze Katie McLaughlin Daniele Procida Frank Wiles There were 39 candidates this ... [More] year. Last year, there were just six. We had multiple candidates from each of: North and South America, Europe, Australia, India and Africa. This year, half of the board is from outside of the USA; previously the USA has been heavily over-represented. 53 people voted, compared with 12 last year. Half of our board members are women, and we have our first African director of the DSF (Anna Makarudze). Many thanks to all who participated - both those who voted, and especially those who put themselves forward to serve on the board. Thanks are also due to the outgoing Board. [Less]

Today we've issued the 2.0.1 and 1.11.9 bugfix releases. The release package and checksums are available from our downloads page, as well as from the Python Package Index. The PGP key ID used for this release is Tim Graham: 1E8ABDC773EDE252.

In case you missed the news, DjangoCon Europe 2018 will take place in beautiful Heidelberg, Germany, from May 23-27, 2018! We've started selling early bird tickets, and opened the Call for Participation and Opportunity Grant applications. We are also ... [More] looking for sponsors. Early Bird Tickets Early Bird Tickets are now available for a reduced price. Early Bird tickets are currently planned to be available until end of January, so be sure to get yours soon! Buying an Early Bird Ticket isn’t just great for you, it also helps us estimate the amount of attendees we will have, and to give us more time to handle any special requirements you may have. You will notice that our ticket pricing allows you to input a ticket price of your choice. With the additional money, we are able to make it a more inclusive conference by investing in accessibility improvements as well as our opportunity grant program, helping people with little resources, and/or a lack of representation in our community to participate in DjangoCon Europe 2018. Please choose to give more if you can – you’ll have a very direct impact on how wonderful our conference and our community will be. Call for Participation (CFP) Our CFP for talks and tutorials is now open! The deadline for submissions is February 1, 2018. We’re looking for speakers of all experience levels and backgrounds, and are currently working on our (opt-in) speaker mentoring program. Talk and tutorial presenters receive free admission to DjangoCon Europe. You can edit your submission until the deadline, so there's no need to wait. If you need additional financial support, please apply to the Opportunity Grant program, where speakers are given special consideration. Opportunity Grant Application We are very proud of our opportunity grant program – this is what you may know from other or previous conferences as the financial aid program. If (either as an attendee or a speaker) paying acommodations and travelling expenses would be difficult for you, especially if you belong to a marginalized or underrepresented group in tech, please check it out. You have until February 1st to submit your request, to give us sufficient time to go through requests, which in turn gives you sufficient time to plan your journey, handle visa applications, and answer all questions you may have. Sponsor opportunities We are only able to run this conference with the support of sponsors that share our goal to create a wonderful, diverse and insightful event. If you are interested in sponsoring DjangoCon Europe 2018, please see our sponsorship page and brochure. Sponsoring is a great opportunity to market developer-focused products, recruit developers, and to give back to the community if you use Django to build your products. DjangoCon Europe has a great track record in supporting diversity in tech. We are committed to continue this tradition and we need strong partners to make this possible. Your own employees can profit a lot from attending DjangoCon Europe. Not only does the conference provide valuable education in form of talks and workshops that improve their professional and technical skills, it is also the single best place to start building a network within a community of potential future partners. Many sponsorship packages include a number of tickets. [Less]

About PyCon Namibia PyCon Namibia held its first edition in 2015. The conference has been held annually since then, and has been at the heart of a new open-source software movement in Namibia. In particular, through PyNam, the Namibian Python ... [More] Society, Python has become the focus of self-organised community volunteering activity in schools and universities. In the last two years, assisted greatly by Helen Sherwood-Taylor, Django Girls has become an important part of the event too. PyCons in Africa The conference has also been the direct prompt for further new PyCons across Africa; Zimbabwe in 2016, Nigeria in 2017 and a planned PyCon Ghana next year. In each case, PyCon attendees from another country have returned home to set up their own events. An important aspect of these events is the opportunity to establish relationships with the international community. Numerous people have travelled from other corners of the world to meet African programmers in their own countries, and many have returned multiple times. Be a Pythonista, not a tourist There is enormous value in this exchange, which gives Python/Django programmers from beyond Africa a unique opportunity to encounter African programmers in their own country, and to visit not as passing tourists but as Pythonistas and Djangonauts who will form long-term relationships with their African counterparts. This helps ensure that the international Python community meaningfully includes its members, wherever in the world they may be, and represents a chance like no other to understand them and what Python might mean in Africa. There is probably no better way to understand what Python might mean in Namibia, for example, than having lunch with a group of Namibian high-school pupils and hearing about their ideas and plans for programming. This exchange enriches not only the PyCon itself, but also the lives of the Pythonistas that it embraces, from both countries, and the communities they are a part of. About the travel fund In order to help maintain this valuable exchange between international Python communities, the Django Software Foundation has set aside a total of US$1500 to help enable travellers from abroad to visit Namibia for next year's PyCon, 20th-22nd February. The DSF seeks expressions of interest from members of the international Django community who'd like to take advantage of these funds. Please get in touch with us by email. We'd like to know: who you are why you'd like to participate where you are travelling from and how much you estimate you will need PyCon Namibia will benefit most from attendees who are interested in developing long-term relationships with its community and attendees. See the conference website for information about travel and more. [Less]

I am currently the Vice-President of the Django Software Foundation, and have served as a member of the DSF Board for two years. This article is intended to help give a clearer picture of what's involved in being on the DSF Board, and might help some ... [More] people decide whether they wish to stand for election. What we do Each month we - the six directors - have a board meeting, via Hangout. This lasts about an hour. We follow an agenda, and discuss questions that have arisen, have report on the state of our finances, and vote on any questions that have come up. Each month a number of the questions we vote on are about grant applications for events (conferences, Django Girls and so on) and nominations for new members. Mostly it's fairly routine business, and doesn't require much deliberation. Occasionally there are trickier questions, for example that might concern: matters where we are not sure what the best way forward is legal questions about what the DSF is and isn't allowed to do disagreements or contentious questions within the DSF or Django community On the whole we find that when it's a matter of judgement about something, that we come to agreement pretty quickly. At each meeting we'll each agree to take on certain administrative tasks that follow on from the discussion. During the month a number of email messages come in that need to be answered - mostly enquiries about support for events, use of the Django logo, and so on, and also several for technical help with Django that we refer elsewhere. Any one of us will answer those, if we can. Some members of the board have special duties or interests - for example the Treasurer and Secretary have official duties, while I often take up enquiries about events. Overall, it's a few hours' work each month. What you need to be a board member The board members are officially "Directors of the Django Software Foundation", which might make it sound more glamorous and/or difficult than it really is. It's neither... If you can: spare a few hours each month spare some personal energy for the job take part in meetings and help make decisions answer email read proposals, requests, applications and other documents carefully help write documents (whether it's composing or proof-reading) listen to people and voices in the Django community then you probably have everything that's required to make a genuine, valuable contribution to Django by serving on the board. Obviously, to serve as the Treasurer or Secretary requires some basic suitable skills for those roles - but you don't need to be a qualified accountant or have formal training. In any case, no-one is born a DSF board member, and it's perfectly reasonable that in such a role you will learn to do new things if you don't know them already. What it's like I can only speak for myself - but I enjoy the work very much. Everyone on the board has a common aim of serving Django and its community, and the way the board works is friendly, collaborative and supportive. There's room for a variety of skills, special knowledge and experience. Different perspectives are welcomed. There's also a very clear Django ethos and direction, that aims at inclusivity and generosity. The sustainability of the project and the well-being of people involved in it are always concerns that are visibly and explicitly on the table in board discussions. It's a very good feeling each month to have our board meeting and be reminded how true the "boring means stable" equation is. Django is a big ship, and it sails on month after month, steadily. It requires some steering, and a shared vision of the way ahead, but progresses without big dramas. As a member of the board, this makes me feel that I am involved in something safe and sustainable. I've been on the DSF board for nearly two years. Serving on the board does require some extra energy and time in my life, but it very rarely, if ever, feels like wasted or useless expenditure of energy. What we do makes sense, and has actual, tangible, useful results. If you have some energy that you would like to do something useful with to help Django and all the individuals and organisations involved in it, I think that serving as DSF board member is an excellent way to use it, because the DSF is a machine that works well and your time and energy won't be wasted. All of this discussion has been wholly from my own perspective, and even then it's quite incomplete. I'm just one board member of six, and other board members might have things they feel are important to add that I have not mentioned. Even so, I hope this account reassures anyone who had any doubts that: they don't need special skills or credentials to be a board member being a board member is a rewarding way to spend their time and energy serving on the board makes a genuine contribution to Django Daniele Procida [Less]

We’re happy to report that our second iteration of the Django/PyСharm fundraising campaign - which we ran this summer - was a huge success. This year we helped raise a total of $66,094 USD for the Django Software Foundation! Last year (2016) we ran a ... [More] similar campaign which resulted in a collective contribution of $50,000 USD to the cause. We’re happy we could raise even more money this year for the Django community! If you missed the campaign here’s the essence of the past promotion: For 3 weeks this summer, Django developers could effectively donate to Django Software Foundation by purchasing a new individual PyCharm Professional annual subscription at 30% off, with all proceeds from the sales going to the Django Software Foundation. Read more details here. All the money raised goes toward Django outreach and diversity programs: supporting DSF, the Django Fellowship program, Django Girls workshops, sponsoring official Django conferences, and other equally incredible projects. We want to say huge thanks to the DSF for their active collaboration and making this fundraiser happen. We hope that in 2018 we’ll be able to make this yearly event even more successful! The DSF general fundraising campaign is still on-going, and we encourage everyone to contribute to the success of Django by donating to DSF directly. If you have any questions, get in touch with us at [email protected] or JetBrains at [email protected]. [Less]

The Django team is happy to announce the release of Django 2.0. This release starts Django’s use of a loose form of semantic versioning, but there aren’t any major backwards incompatible changes (except that support for Python 2.7 is removed) that ... [More] might be expected of a 2.0 release. Upgrading should be a similar amount of effort as past feature releases. The release notes cover the assortment of new features in detail, but a few highlights are: A simplified URL routing syntax that allows writing routes without regular expressions. A responsive, mobile-friendly contrib.admin. Window expressions to allow adding an OVER clause to querysets. You can get Django 2.0 from our downloads page or from the Python Package Index. The PGP key ID used for this release is Tim Graham: 1E8ABDC773EDE252. With the release of Django 2.0, Django 1.11 has reached the end of mainstream support. The final minor bug fix release, 1.11.8, was issued today. As a long-term support release, Django 1.11 will receive security and data loss fixes until April 2020. Django 1.10 has reached the end of extended support. All Django 1.10 users are encouraged to upgrade to Django 1.11 or later to continue receiving fixes for security issues. See the downloads page for a table of supported versions and the future release schedule. [Less]

After three years of full-time work as the Django Fellow, I'd like to scale back my involvement to part-time. That means it's time to hire another Fellow who would like to work on Django 20-40 hours per week. The position is ongoing - the successful ... [More] applicant will have the position until they choose to step down. The position of Fellow is primarily focused on housekeeping and community support - you'll be expected to do the work that would benefit from constant, guaranteed attention rather than volunteer-only efforts. In particular, your duties will include: monitoring the [email protected] email alias and ensuring security issues are acknowledged and responded to promptly fixing release blockers and helping to ensure timely releases fixing severe bugs and helping to backport fixes to these and security issues reviewing and merging pull requests triaging tickets on Trac answering user questions on IRC and the django-developers mailing list helping new Django contributors land patches and learn our philosophy Being a committer isn't a prerequisite for this position; we'll consider applications from anyone with a proven history of working with either the Django community or another similar open-source community. Your geographical location isn't important either - we have several methods of remote communication and coordination that we can use depending on the timezone difference to the supervising members of Django. You'll be expected to post a weekly report of your work to the django-developers mailing list. If you don't perform the duties to a satisfactory level, we may end your contract. We may also terminate the contract if we're unable to raise sufficient funds to support the Fellowship on an ongoing basis (unlikely, given the current fundraising levels). Compensation isn't competitive with full-time salaries in big cities like San Francisco or London. The Fellow will be selected to make best use of available funds. If you're interested in applying for the position, please email us with details of your experience with Django and open-source contribution and community support in general, the amount of time each week you'd like to dedicate to the position (a minimum of 20 hours a week), your hourly rate, and when you'd like to start working. The start date is flexible and will be on or after January 1, 2018. Applications will be open until 1200 UTC, December 18, 2017, with the expectation that the successful candidate will be announced around December 22. Successful applicants will not be an employee of the Django Project or the Django Software Foundation. Fellows will be contractors and expected to ensure that they meet all of their resident country's criteria for self-employment or having a shell consulting company, invoicing the DSF on a monthly basis and ensuring they pay all relevant taxes. If you or your company is interested in helping fund this program and future DSF activities, please consider becoming a corporate member to learn about corporate membership, or you can make a donation to the Django Software Foundation. [Less]

Django 2.0 release candidate 1 is the final opportunity for you to try out the assortment of new features before Django 2.0 is released. The release candidate stage marks the string freeze and the call for translators to submit translations. Provided ... [More] no major bugs are discovered that can't be solved in the next two weeks, Django 2.0 will be released on or around December 1. Any delays will be communicated on the django-developers mailing list thread. Please use this opportunity to help find and fix bugs (which should be reported to the issue tracker). You can grab a copy of the package from our downloads page or on PyPI. The PGP key ID used for this release is Tim Graham: 1E8ABDC773EDE252. [Less]