Open Source · Python Imaging
Pillow needs your help.
Pillow is the most-downloaded Python imaging library. A four-person developer team keeps it alive.
The Origin Story
In 2010, PIL (Python Imaging Library) was effectively abandoned — no Python 3 support, no active development, no releases. Alex Clark forked it, named it Pillow, and shipped the first release.
Over the following years, Pillow became the de facto replacement for PIL across the entire Python ecosystem. It became a dependency of Django, Matplotlib, scikit-image, and thousands of other projects. It's installed billions of times per year.
Today, a small, dedicated team of developers continues to maintain it — fixing security vulnerabilities, adding format support, shipping new releases, and keeping compatibility with every new Python and platform version.
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Why Sponsor
CVEs, vulnerability patches, and security releases — keeping your apps safe when they process user-uploaded images.
Every new Python release requires testing and updates. Sponsors make it possible to stay current on all supported versions.
New image formats, platform wheels, and ecosystem integrations — sponsored development that benefits the entire Python community.
Enterprise Support
As of 2019, professional support for Pillow is available through Sonar (formerly Tidelift). If your organization needs guaranteed response times, security advisories, and maintenance assurances for your open source dependencies — including Pillow — SonarQube's managed open source offering has you covered.
Get proactive notification and remediation guidance for CVEs affecting Pillow in your stack.
Enterprise teams get contractual assurances for timely patches and dependency updates across open source libraries.
Sonar's model channels enterprise subscription revenue directly back to open source maintainers like the Pillow team.
The Team
Support Open Source
If your company or project depends on Pillow, consider sponsoring the team. Even small recurring sponsorships make a real difference to a developer-maintained project used by millions.