How I ended up maintaining a python package with 1M+ downloads
I want to talk about the inception of a FOSS Project whose purpose was just normalizing text with whisper normalizer and how it got unexpectly this much downlaods of almost like 200K per month in some nice months or around cumulatively reached 1M+ downloads.
This was originally created for Malayalam ASR Benchmarking project, but then we found issues for Malayalam in this library and based on which Kavya et al. published a paper EMNLP, 2024. How we fixed this issues.
I will also walk through for beginners how to create a python package and also share at end of talk as an inspiration on why you should also talk in conferences like this.
Journey of how to grow a python FOSS project by solving a problem for you
What is whisper_normalizer doing and how to use it?
Growth of FOSS project and how it is being enabled
How to create a new python package and inspirational stuff at the end
Which track are you applying for?
Kurian Benoy
I don't think talking about packaging a Python project is particularly useful. It has been tricky to do in the past, but projects like uv are making it better https://docs.astral.sh/uv/guides/package/
The proposal can be made clearer, but I like the idea of it. I think it can be useful to talk about what it takes to make a project usable for a wider audience. Publishing, documenting, responding to GitHub issues, etc.
Insufficient content. And the structure of the talk is not clear.
I love the idea. FOSS projects on Indian languages are good food for thought for students and professionals alike to think about the application of FOSS/technology beyond the narrow use cases we are generally taught. I'd request the proposer to focus more on the Indian Languages part, their challenges in it, rather than going generic on Python packages.
The description of the content doesn't clearly reveal what's planned to be delivery through this talk.
I really like some parts of this proposal but I'm not able to understand the structure of this talk. I'm not sure how all of the mentioned takeaways can be covered in a lightning talk slot. This could either end up becoming another "how to start a FOSS project" proposal or just a talk about packaging python projects, none of which particularly fit a national conf like IndiaFOSS. Consider doing a longer version of this at a city event?
The reviewers had mixed feedback on your proposal. While the story of a FOSS project's growth and the challenges of making it usable for a wider audience were appreciated, a key concern was the clarity of the talk's structure and the sufficiency of the content.