Python Packaging Index (PyPI) has announced the introduction of ‘Organization’ accounts, as the first step in its plan to build financial support and long-term sustainability.
Organizations on PyPI are self-managed teams with exclusive branded web addresses. PyPI aims to make its platform easier to use for large community projects, organisations, or companies that manage multiple sub-teams and packages.
Notably, community projects can access the new accounts for free. Corporate projects can access it for “a small fee.”
All revenue from corporate projects will go back into PyPI to continue building better support and infrastructure for all of its users.
PyPI served 235.7 billion downloads for the 448,941 projects it hosts in the last year—representing a 57 percent annual growth in download counts and bandwidth. However, PyPI says it must increase organisational capacity to accommodate the ever-increasing number of users and contributors to Python.
Increased revenue will allow PyPI to become a staffed platform, capable of responding to support requests and addressing issues much faster than its largely volunteer team.
PyPI assures its users that these new features are entirely optional and there is no obligation to create an organization if they won’t find it useful. PyPI is open to feedback and encourages its users to share ideas around safety, security, and usability that would benefit the community.
Community projects and corporate teams can sign up to request their organization name starting today. Submissions will begin seeing review and approval in the coming weeks and corporate teams will be able to finalise their signup with billing details in May.
The introduction of organizations on PyPI is approved by the Packaging Working Group and funded through the Python Software Foundation’s sponsorship program.
PyPI’s introduction of organization accounts should help to support its long-term sustainability while simultaneously addressing community requests.
