cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/4110869
Conda (@[email protected]) writes:
Conda is moving our social media presence from Twitter/X to Mastodon and LinkedIn at the start of 2024. It’s past time to move into spaces that are welcoming and more in line with our community values. Going forward, you can find us at 🐘 @[email protected] (https://fosstodon.org/@conda) 🔗 Conda Community on LinkedIn
Read Conda is moving to Mastodon & LinkedIn | conda.org/blog
Conda (Software)
Conda provides package, dependency, and environment management for any language.
Using conda provides a streamlined approach to package management, platform compatibility, environment isolation, and access to an extensive package ecosystem. It is particularly beneficial for data scientists, researchers, and developers working with diverse software requirements across different projects.
Conda Community
The “conda” community is made up of millions of users, packaging maintainers and tool developers. Conda is not a single organization but rather a concerted effort of many different organizations, all devoted to the mission of providing easy access to various types of free software regardless of the operating system or programming language.
We firmly believe that everyone belongs in open-source, and we want to start by thanking you for taking the time to read this page. What follows is a high level summary of all the projects and organizations which make up the conda community with links provided where you can learn more or get involved yourself. The many meanings of “conda”
Traditionally associated with the Anaconda distribution, nowadays the term “conda” refers to more than just a package manager or a software repository. Its many definitions also encompass community packaging efforts like conda-forge and bioconda, as well as new tools developed in the Mamba and conda-incubator organizations. All these efforts show that the conda ecosystem is no longer defined by a single actor and continues to grow and thrive.
Organizations on GitHub include:
- @conda, plus Anaconda, Inc. efforts like @AnacondaRecipes, @anaconda-distribution, @ContinuumIO
- @conda-forge, @regro
- @conda-incubator & @conda-tools
- @mamba-org
- @bioconda
Some tools you might be familiar with are conda or conda-build themselves but also community efforts like mamba, boa, setup-miniconda, conda-lock or conda-tree, among many more.
Read more about the conda community.
As far as I can tell Conda.org is run independently of Anaconda. Anaconda uses the projects built and developed by the Conda Community. It seems that some employees of Anaconda are paid to work on Conda community projects. But that seems to be the extent of the relationship.
I don’t like or use Anaconda. It’s the definition of bloat and I’m not sure what their value proposition is. Installing and running Conda (or Mamba) is easy to do without installing or using Anaconda. In fact, it’s the recommended method for installing Mamba.
Huh. I wasn’t aware that a full separation had occurred. Is this new-ish? I recall Travis Oliphant in his Lex Friedman interview saying he thought Anaconda (which he’d left by that point) needed to build more of a community around conda. So maybe this was done after then? Still, I have wonder how closely knit the whole thing is with anaconda the company.
Otherwise, yes, Anaconda is bloat. And Hear Hear for Mamba. I told a Pythonista about it a while ago, explained that it’s written in C++ to fix condo’s performance issues. And they got a little upset that it was against the point/“dream” of doing everything in Python. I was quite curt and pointed out that everyone loved using mamba and that Python people should have cared more about there performance critiques.
Many libraries that work efficiently in Python are calling a lower level language anyway. But I’m told that much of the efficiency of mamba has been ported to conda so it seems they did eventually care.
I could very well be incorrect about the separation of Anaconda Inc and Conda, but it seems like it from the statements I read. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find them again.
Oh yea it was a silly statement about Python.
FWIW, my understanding is that Mamba came out of Oliphant’s new outfit started after he left anaconda.
The governance section on the Conda Organization git hub maks it clear that the Conda Organization is independent. The Steering Council serves as a board of directors which must have at least 9 members and no more than 2 can have a financial relationship from the same source (so Anaconda Inc can only have at most 2 of 9 members on the Council).
This wasn’t what I read before but seems more conclusive.
Sounds pretty conclusive to me. Thanks for going the extra mile on that!!