Open source: the contribution of 20tab

Being part of the Open Source community is a real adventure for us developers. At 20tab we have always lived this commitment actively: we do it in many ways, without ever losing our enthusiasm.

In this article I have put together the projects and communities we are part of: you will find out that the Open Source world is truly vast and rich in stimuli. 

Conferences and Community

20tab contributes to several events organized by the community, financially, organizationally and with presentations and discussion panels.

We are sponsors and partners of conferences and meetings that aim to spread open source technologies and make developers aware of them.

PyConIT

One of the main events supported by 20tab is the Italian conference for Python, the PyConIT.

Organized for the first time in 2007 in Florence, aims to bring together for one week, developers from different countries who are passionate about the Python programming language and all its universe, subcommunities included.

One thing to underline is the prominence given, on this occasion, to the inclusiveness of the categories historically less represented within the community, such as linguistic minorities, gender, etc.

A wonderful week for Python lovers and the opportunity of visiting one of Italy’s most beautiful cities, Firenze. What more could you want?

DjangoGirls

As reported in the official guidelines, DjangoGirls is a workshop organized to bring women and mixed-gender groups closer to web development.

To do this, we use the Django web framework, written with the Python programming language, used daily in 20tab for the development of our systems.

We have sponsored some of these events and, at the same time, several members of our team have attended, as coaches, workshops organized in Rome, Florence and Rimini over the years. 

DjangoCon Europe

A conference organized by the community for the community: DjanjoCon is a regular international event taking place around Europe, for all fans of the famous framework. Five days of shared knowledge and innovation, dedicated to talks, sprints and tutorials, that in recent years have turned into a virtual meeting due to the pandemic.

20tab has always been present at the event: I myself have given a series of a bunch of different talks within the conference, bringing experiences and studies on Django and its functionalities to the stage (both real and virtual).

Here you can rewatch my most recent talk held at DjangoCon 2021!

Codemotion

Codemotion needs no introduction for those who write code every day: a point of reference for developers, with its annual conferences held in Rome, Milan, Madrid, Berlin, Tel Aviv and online.

We have always followed Codemotion’s ventures closely and have had the pleasure of working in close contact with the community, through the #AperiTech events and in the great annual event.

Our #StopCoding was born, not surprisingly, right within Codemotion, and several members of our team have held talks and meetings on the occasion of MeetUps and the annual conference organized by the community. 

Other conferences

In the same way, 20tab also contributed to other events over the years, organized by like-minded communities.

Here are a few names:

• EuroPython
• PGDayIT
• PyRoma
• AgileDay
• DevOps Italia Meeting 

Project sponsorship

20tab actively engages in the growth of the open source community and in software development, funding some of the developers of these projects.

uWSGI

For a long time, we have funded the development of uWSGI application server created by former 20tab partner Roberto De Ioris, which then widely spread around the world. It is now used by large international companies. An example? Have you ever heard of Booking.com?

Psycopg3

20tab has given a small contribution, as a communication partner, to the development of psycopg3, the new generation PostgreSQL adapter for the Python programming language: the world’s most widely used one to communicate with the PostgreSQL database in Python projects. 

Open Source development

20tab has always contributed to the Open Source world through the direct development of some major software, which we use in our process, as well as through the release with Open Source licences of software entirely “built” by our team.

Django

Django is the web framework that we use in many of the projects we follow: that’s why we contribute to its improvement, reporting any anomalies and adding new features (big or small) to the code, all done by our developers.

For example, we worked on:

• Added support for the PostgreSQL encryption extension in Django and the RadomUUID function (2017). Find the code here. 
• Migration of the Django site search function from elastic to PostgreSQL full-text search (2017). Find the code here. 
• Added support for saving fixtures as compressed files (e.g.: gz, bz2, xz) directly from Django (2021). Read the in-depth analysis on my blog.

UnrealEnginePython

20tab has funded and internally carried out the development of this plugin that incorporates the Python language in Unreal Engine 4, the renowned graphics engine created by Epic Games.

If you want to know more, you can find it all here.

For us, working and engaging in the Open Source community is a passion as well as a duty, towards our colleagues and for the continuous improvement of our sector.

In this article, I’ve talked about what we have done in the last few years. And this is certainly not the end: we are already looking forward to participating in new ventures!