October 2016 Summaries

The company behind Sentry, a popular open source error tracking and monitoring tool, has maintained its commitment to building a viable business while operating as an open source project. The term "Open Source" is often misunderstood, with people asking why the software is free, rather than understanding the concept of sharing knowledge and discoveries. This philosophy has led to the adoption of open source technologies by major companies like Microsoft and Apple, driven in part by the freedom of choice it provides. Sentry's business model supports its distribution, license, and ethics-driven approach, with a top-down product roadmap guiding development and a strong stance on prioritizing features that evolve its hosted service. The company aims to provide the best possible experience for users, whether they use the open source project or its hosted service.

The Sentry team has successfully replaced their Python-based source map processing with a Rust module, significantly reducing processing times and CPU utilization. The switch was made due to Python's shortcomings in handling the complexity of modern source maps, which led to a bottleneck in their system. The Rust solution, built using CFFI, allows for efficient parsing and processing of source maps, making it an ideal choice for this task. The Sentry team has also developed a thin wrapper around the Rust library, providing a Python API that integrates seamlessly with their existing codebase. This project demonstrates the potential of Rust as a tool for optimizing performance-critical components in Python-based systems.

Meredith Heller joins the Sentry engineering team as a new member, bringing her skills from completing App Academy and working as a Teaching Assistant for their Jumpstart program. She will focus on building tools and processes to improve customer support experiences at Sentry. In her free time, Meredith enjoys exploring nature and has a hobby of altering between being a bed gnome and outdoor enthusiast.

The new add-on extends support to JIRA Service Desk by allowing users to see relevant Sentry issues directly within the JIRA issue page, streamlining issue resolution and user pain point identification. The add-on can be installed from the Atlassian Marketplace and configured to connect with a specific Sentry organization. Additionally, existing integrations with JIRA and other Atlassian products are available, enabling seamless error tracking workflows across multiple platforms.