And Now for Something Completely Different

;login: Enters a New Phase of Its Evolution

For over 20 years, ;login: has been a print magazine with a digital version; in the two decades previous, it was USENIX’s newsletter, UNIX News. Since its inception 45 years ago, it has served as a medium through which the USENIX community learns about useful tools, research, and events from one another. Beginning in 2021, ;login: will no longer be the formally published print magazine as we’ve known it most recently, but rather reimagined as a digital publication with increased opportunities for interactivity among authors and readers.

Since USENIX became an open access publisher of papers in 2008, ;login: has remained our only content behind a membership paywall. In keeping with our commitment to open access, all ;login: content will be open to everyone when we make this change. However, only USENIX members at the sustainer level or higher, as well as student members, will have exclusive access to the interactivity options. Rik Farrow, the current editor of the magazine, will continue to provide leadership for the overall content offered in ;login:, which will be released via our website on a regular basis throughout the year.

As we plan to launch this new format, we are forming an editorial committee of volunteers from throughout the USENIX community to curate content, meaning that this will be a formally peer-reviewed publication. This new model will increase opportunities for the community to contribute to ;login: and engage with its content. In addition to written articles, we are open to other ideas of what you might want to experience.

I use Python in my day-to-day work, and I aspire to being able to write about things that I would want to know more about if I were reading this column instead of writing it. I use Python with Saltstack for writing internal APIs, for templating, for writing one-off tools, and for trying out ideas. It’s my first choice as a go-to tool for almost anything at this point. I’ve come to realize that it’s the lens that I view my computer and my job through.

Between writing my first column and this one, there was the announcement that Python is changing in a fundamental way. So I feel the need to take this opportunity to reflect on the extraordinary nature of this change: on July 12, 2018, Guido van Rossum elected to step down as the BDFL of the Python language.

A lot has been written about the circumstances, and I am not able to add useful commentary or knowledge about Guido’s decision to retire from his title and his position in the community. I just want to add my own voice to those who have thanked him for shepherding the language for as long as he has done.

This is also a great chance to give props to all of Python’s maintainers who will be guiding the language to its next phase of governance and to discuss what that may mean for those of us who mainly use the language. So while this article will be non-technical, I hope it will at least be informative, interesting, and useful.

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