Wow, just a few weeks ago I wanted an optimization function in Python and was already using SciPy, so I reached for scipy.optimize and ran into quite a few of the bugs described first hand, which had me kind of rattled. I just assumed whatever optimizer SciPy uses would be reliable even if it's not completely optimal or cutting edge.

I love the dedication these folks have to their old colleague too. They took a great deal of care in relicensing, so that SciPy could use their derived code even though the original author had passed. Nothing but admiration for them!

Anyways, I was lucky enough that I could restrict my search space on some assumptions and just brute force the problem in very reasonable time, but this is quite timely for me and great to see!