Well-known Python Programs

Some well-known programs that are written, partially or completely, in Python:

Web and Internet Applications

• [http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/index.html MailMan]

• [http://www.bittorrent.com/ BitTorrent]

• [http://sourceforge.net/projects/moin/ MoinMoin]

• [http://spambayes.sourceforge.net/ SpamBayes]

• [http://www.clamwin.com/ ClamWin]

• [http://www.zope.org Zope]

Powered by Python

Some high-profile Web sites are implemented in Python, according to various reports:

• [http://www.reddit.com/ reddit.com] - [http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit written using web.py]

• [http://www.jot.com/ JotSpot] - [http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/#GoogleUsesTwisted2006-10-31 "Google has acquired JotSpot, a company that makes use of Twisted"]

• [http://doggdot.us/ diggdot.us] - with Turbogears under the hood.

• [http://youtube.com youtube.com]

Version Control

• [http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/ Mercurial]

• [http://bazaar-vcs.org/ Bazaar] (formerly Bazaar-NG) and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bazaar_(software) Baz] (formerly Bazaar)

• [http://www.viewvc.org/ ViewVC] (formerly ViewCVS) - a repository browser for CVS and Subversion

• [http://cvs2svn.tigris.org/ cvs2svn] - the CVS to Subversion repository converter

• Two bug trackers: [http://trac.edgewall.org/ Trac] and [http://roundup.sourceforge.net/ Roundup]

Systems Management and Administration

• Many GNU/Linux distributions use Python to manage resources and packages:

  • In many programs and components in the Ubuntu distributions (and related services): "Ubuntu prefer the community to contribute work in Python." ([http://www.ubuntu.com/community/developerzone/bounties Ubuntu bounties for Python work])

  • [http://reconstructor.aperantis.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1 Reconstructor] for Ubuntu and [http://revisor.fedoraunity.org/ Revisor] for Fedora - applications which let users customise their GNU/Linux distribution CDs - are both written in Python

  • Red Hat's up2date tool (the pulsating red dot)

  • [http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/ yum] provides software updates for Fedora and other distributions

  • [http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Projects/Mock mock] and [http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Projects/Plague plague] controls the building of the packages in the Fedora operating system.

  • Fedora and Red Hat's installer, [http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda Anaconda] (notice the clever python tie-in on the name).

  • Gentoo Linux relies on Python since the [http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/portage/ Portage] package management system is written in Python

  • Pardus uses Python extensively: [http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng/projects/comar/PythonInPardus.html "Python in Pardus"]

• HP Compaq / IBM preinstalled Python on a series of computers for some administration tasks

Historical Python Applications

Historically (these have all been rewritten at some point after acquisition):

• Yahoo Mail started out as 411 mail which was all Python
• Yahoo Groups started out as egroups which was all Python
• Microsoft Commerce Server started out as eShop which was all Python (Yes, Microsoft acquired Python-based software!)
• Google's first crawler was written in Python

See also lists at [http://pythonology.org/spotting], [http://www.python.org/about/projects/], [http://pythonsource.com]

Related topic: ScriptableInPython

CategoryAdvocacy