Django and freenode

For nearly twelve years, the Django Project has endeavoured to improve "the web framework for perfectionists with deadlines." Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourage rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. Built by experienced developers, it takes care of much of the hassle of Web development, so you can focus on writing your app without needing to reinvent the wheel. Of course, it's free and open source.

I’m contracted full-time by the Django Software Foundation as a fellow, to manage some of the administrative and community management tasks of the Django project to support rapid development of Django itself. The fellowship program has a major positive impact on how Django is developed and maintained, and I’d encourage any large open source project to consider a similar program.

The Django community is vibrant across the globe, with many annual conferences and local meetups. Sprints are often held at these events, but Django’s development is mainly coordinated remotely, so good communication tools are important to us.

How Django uses freenode

Our community support channels include #django and the django-users mailing list. Discussions about the development of Django itself are held in #django-dev and the django-developers mailing list. #django-sprint provides a chat for sprint participants, including those who want to join remotely. Finally, private discussions of the Django team are held in the #django-core channel.

To keep our community safe and welcoming, Django's Code of Conduct applies to all spaces managed by the Django project or Django Software Foundation (DSF). This includes IRC, the mailing lists, the issue tracker, DSF events, and any other forums created by the project team which the community uses for communication.

What's next for Django?

We're currently working toward releasing Django 1.11, our next long-term support release, in April. This will be the last version of Django to support Python 2.7. Meanwhile, Django's master development branch is targeting Django 2.0 and will support Python 3 only. More details are available on our roadmap.

If you’re interested in learning more about Django, try our tutorial. If you’re already a Django user and want to start contributing, our documentation is extensive, including advice for new contributors.