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TimeTagger - an open source time tracker for individuals.
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Why Pyzo

Open source software is made by people who love writing code. Therefore the quality can be comparable to that of commercial software (and sometimes even better). The Python programming language is the basis for a large community thriving on open source software, and is used for a broad range of tasks.

Python is designed to be easy to read, and might well be the easiest programming language to learn. Nevertheless, it is really complete and powerful, and by using extension code, the crucial parts of an algorithm can be made as fast as C. Due to its open nature, Python is easy to extend. In this manner, people have been able to introduce technologies to Python such as USB interfacing, OpenGL, various GUI toolkits, and GPU computing.

The general public is in general reluctant to use open source software. We think this is due to the following main reasons:

• Fragmentation: to do scientific programming one needs different packages from different websites. This fragmented approach can be confusing to “normal people”; people new to Python don’t know where to start.
• IDE: while coders often use old-school editors like VI or Emacs, normal people prefer a modern IDE (interactive development environment).
• Support: there is no official means of support for most open source software. (In general practice, open source developers are quite helpful, though.)
• Documentation: The documentation of open source software can be a bit sparse sometimes.

• With Pyzo we will build a coherent scientific Python environment that is easy to use for normal people. The Pyzo distro will get you a basic setup suitable for scientific programming. But the installation is transparent, so additional packages can be installed in the conventional way.
• We have been working for several years on our IDE, and we’re getting very positive feedback.
• We engage on improving standards and documentation of our own packages as well as that of other projects. Further we will develop more tools to use the documentation from within the IDE in an effective way.
• We offer informal support through our mailing list. We think that we can be a good “middle person” between the normal user and the open source developers, by filing a bug report and helping the user to a temporal solution, or by simply solving the bug and sending a patch to the developer. There are plans for paid support as well.