Today I had a pleasure to maintain my first Skype4Py release. The power of open source: code will never die.

Skype4Py is a Python library for controlling a Skype desktop application enabling all sorts of automation for Skype chats and calls. It’s originally work of Arkadiusz Wahlig from 2009.

The code is old and has not seen active development for years. But it is in perfectly good shape following the best practices of Python development. The code just works, regardless of those multiple Skype releases the world has seen since the last decade. The library was missing only few patches regarding the changes in modern operating systems and minor bugs.

Also, this project is 100% free, unlike Skype’s own SDK (registration + 5 USD fee needed last time I checked).

What actually was missing was a community maintained release process. So, Arkadiusz moved code to a Github where I could migrate the patches from earlier code forks. Then I updated the codebase to follow zest.releaser release automation best practices, so now making new releases is just typing a single line of command. Also, Github makes the merging of patches much much more easier thanks to its Pull request feature.

I did this mainly because my own project, Sevabot, a Skype bot supporting integration with external services, depends on Skype4Py and having real PyPi package releases of Skype4Py makes the life of Sevabot users easier. In turn, I use Sevabot internally in my projects (issue tracker, version control monitoring integration), so it basically makes my own life a joy. I have outsourced my work to a Skype bot, even better than outsourcing it to low paid Asian developers.

There are still some outstanding (Windows) issues in Skype4Py. I trust now when people see active development around the project there are enough Microsoft oriented hands and eyeballs to get those issues fixed.

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