PEP 541: transfer "PIL" to "Pillow" maintainers

[verhovsky]

Pillow is a fork of the Python Imaging Library, PIL.

Pillow is installed as pip install pillow but imported as from PIL import Image. This mismatch causes confusion for users, this Stack Overflow question and this Stack Overflow question have each been viewed half a million times, and there are a couple other questions caused by this situation. It's a popular library and used by beginners.

On PyPI, the last release of PIL was on Dec 3, 2006 https://pypi.org/project/PIL/#history whereas Pillow is still being actively devolped. This predates Python 3 (2008). Because it predates Python 3, it would okay to transfer the pip install pil name to the authors of Pillow using PEP 541. If not right now, definitely when Python 2 is deprecated in January 2020.

[jamadden]

I've emailed the address we have on file for the sole owner account; that address isn't verified.

Based on public information, I believe that account belongs to a well-known Python developer and author; the most recent CPython commit from that person appears to be from 2006. I've been unable to identify a github repo or other means of contact.

[jamadden]

I've attempted more contacts, most recently when the address for this issue was updated. I've yet to receive a response.

(Cross-linking back to the pillow issue where the pillow maintainers indicated they would be interested: python-pillow/Pillow#1535 (comment))

[ewdurbin]

Transfer complete.