Mozilla is giving $200,000 to Baroque Software to work on PyPy, specifically to implement support for Python 3.5. Eight other open source projects also shared $385,000 in the recent round of funding.

PyPy is a Python interpreter with an integrated JIT compiler that currently supports Python 2.7. The money from Mozilla will be used to implement the Python 3.5 features in PyPy. The money will be used over the coming year to pay four core PyPy developers half-time to work on the missing features, and on some of the big performance and cpyext issues. 

Writing about the new support on the PyPy blog, Armin Rigo said that while PyPy will support Python 2.7 forever, the team wants to support 3.x, particularly as Python 3.5 seems to attract more people.

Doing the relevant work requires a larger-scale development effort than had been possible until now, and Rigo said:

"PyPy is close to supporting all of Python 3.3 now; but the list of what is new in Python 3.4 and 3.5 is far, far longer than anyone imagines. The long-term goal is also to get a version of "PyPy3" that is as good as "PyPy2" is, including its performance and its cpyext layer (CPython C API interoperability), for example."

The funding should make it possible to do the necessary work. Mozilla is best known for its Firefox web browser, but is more generally a major supporter of open source software. Mozilla has handed over $585,000 in the second quarter of 2016 to a number of open source projects, including PyPy.

The money is part of a support program launched last year called MOSS (Mozilla Open Source Support), which was announced last October to:

"recognize and celebrate communities who are leading the way with open source projects that contribute to our work and the health of the Web".

All the projects supported in this round of funding have been chosen because "they believe in innovation for public benefit" according to a blog post by Mozilla. 

The current list of projects being supported (in addition to PyPy) are

• Tor - a system for using a distributed network to communicate anonymously and without being tracked.
  
  
• Tails - secure-by-default live operating system that aims at preserving the user’s privacy and anonymity. 
  
  
• Caddy - an HTTP/2 web server that uses HTTPS automatically and by default via Let’s Encrypt.
  
  
• Mio - an asynchronous I/O library written in Rust.
  
  
• Dnssec - a project standardizing and implementing a new TLS extension for transport of a serialized DNSSEC record set.
  
  
• Godot Engine - a high-performance multi-platform game engine which can deploy to HTML5.
  
  
• Pears (Peer-to-peer Agent for Reciprocated Search) a lightweight, distributed web search engine which runs in an individual’s browser and indexes the pages they visit in a privacy-respecting way.
  
  
• Nvda -  NonVisual Desktop Access , a free, open source screen reader for Microsoft Windows

Mozilla says it is looking for other projects to support, saying:

"We look forward to enabling even more OS maintenance, improvement and innovation through MOSS, so please apply! The committee meets next in early September, so get your applications in by the end of August."

More Information

Mozilla Blog

MOSS/Secure Open Source

Related Articles

Mozilla Funds Open Source Code Audits

Mozilla Distributes Funds To Open Source 

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