django/docs/internals/committers.txt

.. _internals-committers:

=================
Django committers
=================

The original team
=================

Django originally started at World Online, the Web department of the `Lawrence
Journal-World`_ of Lawrence, Kansas, USA.

`Adrian Holovaty`_
    Adrian is a Web developer with a background in journalism. He's known in
    journalism circles as one of the pioneers of "journalism via computer
    programming", and in technical circles as "the guy who invented Django."
    
    He was lead developer at World Online for 2.5 years, during which time
    Django was developed and implemented on World Online's sites. He's now the
    leader and founder of EveryBlock_, a "news feed for your block".
    
    Adrian lives in Chicago, USA.

`Simon Willison`_
    Simon is a well-respected web developer from England. He had a one-year
    internship at World Online, during which time he and Adrian developed Django
    from scratch. The most enthusiastic Brit you'll ever meet, he's passionate
    about best practices in web development and maintains a well-read
    `web-development blog`_.
    
    Simon lives in Brighton, England.

`Jacob Kaplan-Moss`_
    Jacob is a software architect at `Whiskey Media`_, one of those newfangled
    Web 1.0 companies you've read so much about. A good deal of Jacob's work
    time is devoted to working on Django. Jacob previous worked for the Lawrence
    Journal-World, where he was the lead developer of Ellington, a commercial
    web publishing platform for media companies.
    
    Jacob lives in Lawrence, Kansas, USA.
    
`Wilson Miner`_
    Wilson's design-fu is what makes Django look so nice. He designed the
    website you're looking at right now, as well as Django's acclaimed admin
    interface. Wilson is the designer for EveryBlock_.
    
    Wilson lives in San Francisco, USA.

.. _lawrence journal-world: http://ljworld.com/
.. _adrian holovaty: http://holovaty.com/
.. _everyblock: http://everyblock.com/
.. _simon willison: http://simonwillison.net/
.. _web-development blog: `simon willison`_
.. _jacob kaplan-moss: http://jacobian.org/
.. _whiskey media: http://whiskeymedia.com/
.. _wilson miner: http://wilsonminer.com/

Current developers
==================

Currently, Django is led by a team of volunteers from around the globe.

BDFLs
-----

Adrian and Jacob are the Co-`Benevolent Dictators for Life`_ of Django. When
"rough consensus and working code" fails, they're the ones who make the tough
decisions.

.. _Benevolent Dictators for Life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_Dictator_For_Life

Core developers
---------------

These are the folks who have a long history of contributions, a solid track
record of being helpful on the mailing lists, and a proven desire to dedicate
serious time to Django. In return, they've been granted the coveted commit bit,
and have free rein to hack on all parts of Django.

`Malcolm Tredinnick`_
    Malcolm originally wanted to be a mathematician, somehow ended up a software
    developer. He's contributed to many Open Source projects, has served on the
    board of the GNOME foundation, and will kick your ass at chess.
        
    When he's not busy being an International Man of Mystery, Malcolm lives in
    Sydney, Australia.

.. _malcolm tredinnick: http://www.pointy-stick.com/

Russell Keith-Magee
    Russell studied physics as an undergraduate, and studied neural networks for
    his PhD. His first job was with a startup in the defense industry developing
    simulation frameworks. Over time, mostly through work with Django, he's
    become more involved in web development.

    Russell has helped with several major aspects of Django, including a
    couple major internal refactorings, creation of the test system, and more.
    
    Russell lives in the most isolated capital city in the world — Perth,
    Australia.
    
Joseph Kocherhans
    Joseph is currently a developer at EveryBlock_, and previously worked for
    the Lawrence Journal-World where he built most of the backend for the their
    Marketplace site. He often disappears for several days into the woods,
    attempts to teach himself computational linguistics, and annoys his
    neighbors with his Charango_ playing.
    
    Joseph's first contribution to Django was a series of improvements to the
    authorization system leading up to support for pluggable authorization.
    Since then, he's worked on the new forms system, its use in the admin, and
    many other smaller improvements.
    
    Joseph lives in Chicago, USA.

.. _charango: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charango

`Luke Plant`_
    At University Luke studied physics and Materials Science and also
    met `Michael Meeks`_ who introduced him to Linux and Open Source,
    re-igniting an interest in programming.  Since then he has
    contributed to a number of Open Source projects and worked
    professionally as a developer.
    
    Luke has contributed many excellent improvements to Django,
    including database-level improvements, the CSRF middleware and
    many unit tests.
    
    Luke currently works for a church in Bradford, UK, and part-time
    as a freelance developer.

.. _luke plant: http://lukeplant.me.uk/
.. _michael meeks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Meeks_(software)

`Brian Rosner`_
    Brian is currently a web developer working on an e-commerce system in
    Django. He spends his free time contributing to Django and enjoys to learn
    more about programming languages and system architectures. Brian is the
    co-host of the weekly podcast, `This Week in Django`_.
    
    Brian helped immensely in getting Django's "newforms-admin" branch finished
    in time for Django 1.0; he's now a full committer, continuing to improve on
    the admin and forms system.
    
    Brian lives in Denver, USA.

.. _brian rosner: http://oebfare.com/
.. _this week in django: http://thisweekindjango.com/

Gary Wilson
    In early 2007, Gary started contributing a lot of cleanup fixes and fixing
    broken windows. He's continued to do that necessary tidying up work
    throughout the code base since then.

Karen Tracey
    Karen has a background in distributed operating systems (graduate school),
    communications software (industry) and crossword puzzle construction 
    (freelance).  The last of these brought her to Django, in late 2006, when
    she set out to put a web front-end on her crossword puzzle database.  
    That done, she stuck around in the community answering questions, debugging
    problems, etc. -- because coding puzzles are as much fun as word puzzles.

    Karen lives in Apex, NC, USA.

Specialists
-----------

`James Bennett`_
    James is Django's release manager; he also contributes to the documentation.
    
    James came to web development from philosophy when he discovered
    that programmers get to argue just as much while collecting much
    better pay. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas, where he works for the
    Journal-World developing Ellington. He `keeps a blog`_, has
    written a `book on Django`_, and enjoys fine port and talking to
    his car.

.. _james bennett: http://b-list.org/
.. _keeps a blog: `james bennett`_
.. _book on Django: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1590599969/?tag=djangoproject-20

Ian Kelly
    Ian is responsible for Django's support for Oracle.
    
Matt Boersma
    Matt is also responsible for Django's Oracle support.
    
Justin Bronn
    Justin Bronn is a computer scientist and third-year law student at the
    University of Houston who enjoys studying legal topics related to
    intellectual property and spatial law.
    
    Justin is the primary developer of ``django.contrib.gis``, a.k.a.
    GeoDjango_.
    
.. _GeoDjango: http://geodjango.org/

Jeremy Dunck
    Jeremy the lead developer of Pegasus News, a personalized local site based
    in Dallas, Texas. An early contributor to Greasemonkey and Django, he sees
    technology as a tool for communication and access to knowledge.
    
    Jeremy helped kick off GeoDjango development, and is mostly responsible for
    the serious speed improvements that signals received in Django 1.0.
    
    Jeremy lives in Dallas, Texas, USA.
    
Developers Emeritus
===================

Georg "Hugo" Bauer
    Georg created Django's internationalization system, managed i18n
    contributions and made a ton of excellent tweaks, feature additions and bug
    fixes.
    
Robert Wittams
    Robert was responsible for the *first* refactoring of Django's admin
    application to allow for easier reuse and has made a ton of
    excellent tweaks, feature additions and bug fixes.