This is why most organizations take a blind eye when popular people in their community behave badly; if they even so much as give them a three-month ban from the forum, people will keep bringing it up years later.
The argument you are making here is incredibly disingenuous.
The facts matter. Tim Peters did not behave badly. The reasoning given for his suspension misrepresented the apparent evidence, vaguely alluded to unproven private activity, and alleged harm in clearly benign actions.
I claim that I, too, did not behave badly. In particular, in "recommending" my ban, the Code of Conduct Work Group (which is unelected, and has considerable crossover with paid PSF staff; and to my understanding gets paid in some circumstances for code of conduct enforcement work even as the actual core developers are almost all volunteers) made bizarre mischaracterizations of my complaints — going so far as to falsely ascribe to me terminology that I do not use on principle.
You, specifically, should know about these sorts of things because you comment in these discussions all the time. For example, you participated in https://discuss.python.org/t/shedding-light-on-a-three-month... and your posts there demonstrate intimate familiarity with the situation, with quotes like "I suppose I have to point out that “This whole debacle…” wasn’t referring to just Tim personally and not just this one bylaw change but rather referring to, well, gestures to the last two months." (I remember reading that post, not logged in of course, back when you made it.)
You have seen the list of charges in https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co... so I think you reasonably should understand my position: to the extent that the referents of any of these actions were ever identified, the description is either nonsense or does not point at anything any reasonable person could consider actionable. If you disagree, please be concrete. The entire reason for the "endless litigation" you have repeatedly complained about is the lack of anyone on your side making any clear, understandable argument that anything Tim Peters did at any point was actually wrong. The closest I've seen to such an argument comes from ... Tim Peters (https://tim-one.github.io/psf/meaculpa), and frankly I think it's far too self-effacing.
This is why folks can't take yall seriously when discussing code of conduct. This person has a history of being shitty, and they used the CoC to enforce a (temporary!) ban, citing the rules he violated. If the CoC didn't exist, you'd be screaming "he didn't do anything wrong", but obviously, according to the well posted rules, he did, and they enforced those rules for the good of the community.
The reality of the situation is that yall don't want to be excluded from communities for being racist, misogynistic, or creepy.
It's been over a year, and they still haven't provided any tangible examples to support their claims. The best they could come up with was something like "he used the wink emoji" I think. There have been hundreds of posts, and many community members have demanded either evidence to back up those accusations or a public apology to Tim and their removal. But of course, those people are racist, misogynist, or creeps so nothing came out of it.
The steering committee folks sound like a microcosm of a communist poliburo. Aiming for who can be the most offended over imaginary slights.
I'm glad as An American tax payer that we're not funding an organization with such petty politics and discriminatory behaviors.
Tim sounds similar to John Carmack recent she post about Meta:
> I wish I could drop (so many of) my old internal posts publicly, since I don’t really have the incentive to relitigate the arguments today – they were carefully considered and prescient. They also got me reported to HR by the manager of the XROS effort for supposedly making his team members feel bad
I've come to the conclusion that this is how it needs to work:
1. As the first person on the project, assume BDFL status and prepare to act that way as soon as you consider accepting a PR.
2. As a person, make sure you strongly understand what your moral values are, and why you hold them.
3. Proactively write your own Code of Conduct from scratch. It's important to have one so that you will not be pressured to use someone else's. It's important to ensure that it reflects your own values, not those of some activist organization (or another project that has been co-opted). Make it simple, but feel free to refer to additional documents. https://compass.naivete.me/ can be considered an example (this is not an endorsement, and again my recommendation is to write it yourself from scratch).
4. Do not have an "Enforcement Procedures" document, and actively reject any such proposal. The interpretation of your code of conduct should be apparent from the text itself, given a reasonable-person standard; you do not need to try to formalize the notion of a reasonable person.
5. If people think you are being unreasonable in your project governance, take that discussion somewhere else.
6. Remember at all times that everyone is free to fork your project. If people wish to do this over a governance dispute, it would be better for it to happen now than later. Do not try to prevent this from happening: do not attack the efforts of others (as has happened to XLibre), and also do not negotiate with others out of fear that they might start a fork. If they start a fork it is of no concern to you.
7. Only dictatorships and democracies are stable. While you are in charge, power rests only in those you directly appoint, and you may revoke this if necessary. When you are ready to leave, unless you have in mind a 100% trusted successor, ensure that your replacement is elected and that the project has a charter such that power can only rest with elected individuals.
Not having such a committee in power and most likely no COC. The FSF's Kindness COC sounds good though.
Within perl we treated conference abuse privately in a seperate nonpublic group, but never mailinglist outbursts. This group had no power over anyone else. Esp. over devs with different opinions, who critized core devs over their work.
Glad to hear one programming community is handling the issues in what sounds like a healthy way.
It also requires actual human effort though, so it's difficult to do. People hate doing difficult things and prefer to be part of "witch hunts" because they're easy IMHO. Discussion and discourse is key.
Asking for the right one-size-fits-all system skips doing the systems thinking up front.
A failure mode with a lot of community management systems is that they're adopted because they have a general vibe of keeping the bad people out. And that vibe will see any criticism of the community management document/team/actions as a way to sneak the bad people in.
Imagine I told you I found a rando discord server dedicated to a tabletop RPG I love, but complained that the moderation team was a clique. I claimed that I feel forced to fit in by pandering to their sensibilities and biting my tongue on other topics even if they're just flat out provably wrong. Nobody would assume I'm just salty because I secretly want to post porn, cuss and be racist in #general. Because we all know discord mods are notoriously petty tyrants.
Now give that discord community a github page and copy-paste in an HR document. The way expectations snap into treating them like levelheaded professionals with unassailable intentions and righteous goals is the reason this topic always goes nowhere.
If Tim Peters has a "history of being shitty", I'd expect Wikipedia to mention it. But his article is clean, if not golden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Peters_(software_engineer).
The only thing I've heard is that he's a bit neurodivergent/socially awkward, which I thought we were suppose to be welcoming and inclusive of.
The reality is that you may be confusing a victim with your political enemies.
Definitely true. Wikipedia has sensitivities reflecting their most dedicated (& extremely online) administrators. Alert & keen for some topics while inert & hostile to others.
I use their bias sometimes for detection. For example, the GP here advances a melodramatic allegation, which someone from their Wikipedian tribe would certainly have documented-- if the evidence aligned with their bias.
I wouldn't expect it to show up on their Wikipedia page, because Wikipedia has a high barrier for what they consider reliable information, and they wouldn't use email list postings, or personal accounts of behavior in what they'd include. This person isn't really relevant enough for his behavior to show up in the news.
But, the employees at the foundation, who are responsible for keeping the community healthy, and for enforcing policies, would absolutely take complaints, then use personal accounts, email list history, chat history, and such. It's effectively like how HR works.
> The only thing I've heard
Right, because you're talking to the wrong people, and you're ignoring the fact that he has had folks complain about his behavior, and you're also ignoring his email list and chat history, which you could go look at.
You're acting like this is some kind of witch hunt, when it's simply "HR" enforcing "employment handbook" standards. It just happens to be that this is a set of volunteers, rather than employees.
> because you're talking to the wrong people, and you're ignoring the fact that he has had folks complain about his behavior, and you're also ignoring his email list and chat history, which you could go look at.
Can you provide any concrete evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever?
For example, Mr. Peters has published comments of his that were removed from the pertinent discussions, and I can vouch for their accuracy from my own recollection. (Since the Discourse forum can also be used via mailing list, and emails cannot be un-sent, presumably many other people can corroborate via their own local backups, too.) Can you find anything in them to suggest wrongdoing?
> and you're also ignoring his email list and chat history, which you could go look at.
I'm not the person you replied to but I've just spent a bunch of time looking at (what seem to be) the relevant posts on https://discuss.python.org/, along with a couple of external posts about the ban, and I've yet to find anything that looks like a pattern of shitty behaviour on the part of Tim Peters. I wasn't previously aware of him and I obviously may have missed something important, so I ask this in good faith: can you point to some of the specific emails/chats you had in mind? (I'm happy not to argue the point if you'd prefer not to; I'd just like to see the strongest anti-Peters evidence.)
I was looking for a credible source, which you have not supplied.
The threads you've waved at do not show Tim to be the "racist, sexist or creep" that you've insinuated. Rather, they show a committee that can't handle questions, abuses its own rules, and hides behind HR & secret "complaints".
Of course, that's just my opinion from skimming. It'd be better to have someone credible give honest evidence, instead of someone defaming & blaming while projecting their bigotry onto others.
No, he does not. He has been a pillar of the community since the beginning, and well loved by many. He has also been trusted with various forms of moderation authority in the past, and his decisions were respected at the time.
> and they used the CoC to enforce a (temporary!) ban, citing the rules he violated.
Please read https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co..., and then https://tim-one.github.io/psf/crimes.html . Mr. Peters is, if anything, overly self-critical here. He quite frankly did nothing wrong. The supposed "rule violations" include things that no reasonable person could actually object to, as well as complete mischaracterizations of the observable facts. In some places, multiple points appear to refer to the same action. In some places it's unclear what is referred to and there has never been any official explanation. In no case is any evidence provided.
> If the CoC didn't exist, you'd be screaming "he didn't do anything wrong"
I am saying it (your use of the word "screaming" here is demeaning, substance-less rhetoric) because it is in fact the case. Many of the cited "violations" don't actually go against the Code of Conduct (https://policies.python.org/python.org/code-of-conduct/), even if they were true and accurate.
> but obviously, according to the well posted rules, he did
It is not obvious, because it is incorrect.
> and they enforced those rules for the good of the community.
No useful purpose was served by this suspension.
> The reality of the situation is that yall don't want to be excluded from communities for being racist, misogynistic, or creepy.
This accusation is baseless, incorrect, and offensive.
The reality is that they go after intelligent people and political opponents on specious grounds because they are jealous and want to preserve their own power.
You can dig up any number of posts on anyone, as Richelieu has pointed out pre-Internet.
Many of the comments here are disappointing. Regardless of your opinion of the PSF or its leadership, you should be opposed to this kind of clawback threat because it nakedly represents an attempt to place a non-profit in a double bind: even attempting to comply with these requirements would allow a politicized IRA to claim that the PSF is failing to uphold its stated mission.
The evidence strongly suggests to me that the PSF knew, or reasonably ought to have known, the terms of the agreement months ago, which makes the current activity read very much like a publicity stunt (after realizing they wouldn't be able to take the money).
We are talking about a grant here. I can't see anything wrong with offering someone money that comes with strings attached, when you don't owe anything in the first place. Especially when the offer is being made generally rather than targeting anyone in particular.
In my assessment, the "stated mission" reflects politics that indirectly resulted in harm to me personally, perpetrated by the PSF's Code of Conduct Work Group. The way that this "mission" is presented is in line with common statements that the administration has identified as discriminatory, and I believe they are justified in coming to that conclusion. The PSF represents it as something simple and agreeable; but while I indeed agree with the idea they represent it as, in practice I have seen it mean something very different, and objectionable. In making this representation I find that they commonly insinuate salacious, untrue things about people with value systems like my own, and I consider that representation to be simply dishonest.
The Work Group in question has a document of "Enforcement Procedures" for the Code of Conduct. I determined that these procedures may lead to making decisions that directly contradict what the Code of Conduct says. When I pointed this out, I was baselessly accused of citing previous (unspecified) moderation action against me as examples of the phenomenon that the Code of Conduct forbids but the Enforcement Procedures require ignoring. In so doing, it was proposed that I characterized these actions in terms that I explicitly reject using. (In fact, the main point of my post was to reject the term — as it is one commonly used in strawman representations of my position.)
Organizations should avoid funding by the government whenever possible. It creates incentives for the organization to align with the politics of the government. I am all for this outcome, as it’s a net win for PSF and any organization that can fund itself
But if they don't get it from the government, they'll get it somewhere else, and then that will create incentives for the organization to align with the politics of whoever gives them the money. There's no escaping the implicit dependence that comes with accepting money.
I think we just need to reduce the amount of discretion involved in government action of all kinds.
> There's no escaping the implicit dependence that comes with accepting money.
And, at least, the government was elected and has votes to back its political power.
Other sources usually use money to back their political power, which is another problem altogether - political power should NEVER come solely from money.
Regardless of how you feel about the nature of government funding, you should be able to cogitate a strong argument for the U.S. government not playing “gotcha” games with its funding.
The problem is that the population of the US is itself polarized, and different factions want the government to be doing extremely different things with its funds. If faction A has successfully gotten the US federal government to fund something for a long time, and faction B hates that thing, campaigns on ending the funding, and then does end it once they win an election and take power - then a demand for the US to not play gotcha games with its funding is isomorphic to a demand from political faction A to keep some of their preferred policies in place even though they are not currently in a position of electoral power.
Yes, outcomes like these are the best way to avoid dependency on a central authority. I’m more for moving away from the ability of such authorities to exercise such power, rather than hoping they don’t abuse it. They certainly will eventually
> you should be opposed to this kind of clawback threat because it nakedly represents an attempt to place a non-profit in a double bind
The clawback is this sentence, yes? "NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and recover all funds if
recipients, during the term of this award, operate any program in violation of Federal anti-
discriminatory laws or engage in a prohibited boycott."
How exactly is "you must follow anti-discrimination law" a "naked" attempt at a double-bind?
(And, um, I'd be more worried about that "prohibited boycott" thing. It's mentioned explicitly in the sentence with the clawback, and I don't see where it's defined.)
Boycotting Israel, for example, is a prohibited boycott.
This is a little-known but long-established part of US policy; see https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/enforcement/oac for more details. My employer actually has a reminder in the legal trainings of our corporate responsibilities under these policies (and yes, it rubs me the wrong way).
It’s been disappointing to you for at least a decade and yet you keep using it? Blink twice if the mods have been keeping you imprisoned in the server closet and forcing you to speak to them in Arc
Immediatly though of donating > $1.5M to remove that indentation hell.
What do you mean it's in their values?
More seriously, I can only respect someone (natural or legal) who refuses 7 figures for their values, which ever those might be and whether I share them or not.
Many people here have pointed out in response to flagged comments that the decision was legalistic, bureaucratic and self-preserving. I.e., the PSF did not want to enter a territory where it might be forced to repay the grant.
The money was earmarked for PyPI and the refusal did not impact those who have other positions in the PSF. In 2020, when it was politically safe, the PSF made several BLM support statements. There are no statements about people of color in Gaza or extrajudicial killings off the Venezuelan coast in 2025.
Moreover, they got political capital from this action for an organization that was/is severely damaged by the ruthless and libelous leadership. And they prepare for another pendulum swing that might materialize in the 2026 midterms.
Culture wars are intentionally engineered by the rich to distract everyone else from forming class solidarity against them. And it is amazingly effective.
No, people actually disagree about cultural changes. Not sure what kind of world model you must have in order to believe that ANY society wouldn't suffer from "culture wars" as it evolves. I suppose you believe that the entire prohibition episode in US history was also orchestrated by "the rich"?
Struggling over cultural changes is a real phenomenon and sometimes even worth engaging in.
But ultimately, ideas are secondary to matter. Most people on this planet work for the profits of a very small group. If they weren’t divided, they could easily defeat that small group and organise society for the benefit of the majority.
As Warren Buffet said, class warfare is happening and his class is winning. We should all internalise that and engage in class struggle.
I mean...this thread joins the dozens of others in recent memory that has turned into a war-zone, filled with disposable throwaway accounts and bad faith downvoting that will almost certainly go unpunished.
Considering the kind of money behind YCombinator, they're not exactly beating the rap.
There are two huge problems with these highly intrusive grant requirements that are different than previous Admin's DEI statements (which people sometimes point to, in a "what about ..."):
- they apply to _all_ of the org's activities, whereas previous statements only applied to the grant itself (it had to be used in X way) ; this is what PSF found untenable
- the gov can claw back the money if they deem you were violating the reqs pretty much as their discretion; while this might seem unlikely, the Trump admin is highly aggressive towards universities, withholding funding in a way that has not been done before under a bogus excuse of anti-semitism. It shows they will have their way and there's nothing you will be able to do about it.
I think "The US government is too unpredictable at this time to be a trustworthy source of funding" is actually pretty in-touch with reality, unfortunately.
The paid staff are, broadly speaking, the ones enforcing the rules (and making PyCon happen). Almost all the actual development is on a volunteer basis, with people operating remotely and submitting PRs to GitHub (where the only people who ever act unprofessional are annoyed bug reporters). What "work environment"?
“Inclusive” - meanwhile, I’ve not felt comfortable at a PSF-sponsored event since 2013, when people started losing their jobs for barely off-color jokes… and for reporting them.
PlayHaven's CEO implied their reasons to fire the employee who made inappropriate jokes at PyCon were not the jokes alone. Most people assumed SendGrid would not have fired the employee who attempted public shaming if she instead reported the jokes. And how were PSF responsible for what PlayHaven and SendGrid did?
No, people feel excluded because they are falsely accused of "telling racist jokes" when they objectively do nothing of the sort, meanwhile the people next to them are openly racist (and claim that they are not being racist because their actions are excluded by definition) without penalty.
Also as a reminder: in 2013 at PyCon, Adria Richards overheard people who weren't speaking to her and didn't know she was there, took offense to what they were saying, and ignored all official procedure to complain about it publicly on Twitter instead. That's why people were upset at her.
What is it that you say on a regular basis that makes you feel like you need to walk on eggshells?
As I've said many times in the comments. I have 20+ years experience working for corporations. All through the me too wave, the increase focus on DE&I, and the general move to try and be less exclusionary. I've worked with woman, gay people, trans, and people of just about every ethnicity you could think of. Never once, in all those years, have I ever feared for my job or felt excluded.
Literally the only people I have ever heard complain are the ones I know for a fact tell racist and sexist jokes because they always felt comfortable enough around me to tell them.
If the fact that we are a bit more mindful about being racist and sexist in the work place bothers you, I think you may need to look inward at your own behavior. Not outward.
> What is it that you say on a regular basis that makes you feel like you need to walk on eggshells?
For example, the things James Damore said, that resulted in his firing and which were blatantly misrepresented all over social media and journalism — to the point of people directly quoting things and then asserting that the quote means something other than its actual meaning.
> Never once, in all those years, have I ever feared for my job or felt excluded.
Not even when people assert that discrimination against your kind doesn't count as X-ism?
> Literally the only people I have ever heard complain are the ones I know for a fact tell racist and sexist jokes because they always felt comfortable enough around me to tell them. If the fact that we are a bit more mindful about being racist and sexist in the work place bothers you
You directly equivocate here. If they are telling racist and sexist jokes "around you", that is not doing so "in the work place". Moreover, if they "feel comfortable enough around you to tell them", that requires that you aren't objecting to it.
This is exactly the kind of dishonest manipulative baiting that makes people feel uncomfortable. Absolutely nothing InvertedRhodium said was in any way racist, and your allegations otherwise are both wholly devoid of evidence and against the community standards here.
If you can't make your point without leveling extreme and baseless allegations at fellow posters, that's a good sign that your point is without merit.
I didn't say he was a racist. But we are talking about feeling excluded in environments where the primary change has been it's not longer acceptable to tell racist/sexist jokes or make disparaging comments about others based race/sex/ethnicity.
People have had three opportunities now to give concrete examples of behavior that should be acceptable and makes them feel excluded or like they need to walk on eggshells. Nobody has offered a single thing.
So point blank: What can you not say or do in these environments for fear of reprisal?
> where the primary change has been it's not longer acceptable to tell racist/sexist jokes or make disparaging comments about others based race/sex/ethnicity.
This is simply untrue. Such conduct was already completely and utterly unacceptable prior to "DEI", for decades. These policies have instead enabled disparaging comments about others based on race/sex/ethnicity — in particular, accusing people belonging to certain such groups of being inherently whatever-ist (see for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWoC90bbsdo), while defining away discrimination perpetrated against them (to move back towards the original topic, this claim was repeated many times in the discussion of the removal of references to "Strunk & White" in PEP 8).
> What can you not say or do in these environments for fear of reprisal?
For example, I doubt that you could refuse a request to state your "preferred pronouns", or critique the idea of making such requests or normalizing the culture around them.
Don't agree with the comments above and generally support DEI initiatives, but I also have an example.
A new DEI director joined a previous employer and started a mandatory survey to affirmatively label everyone's trans status. Whatever you entered would be used to auto-update your public info page with details on whether you identified as trans or not, with no opt out. I hope I don't have to explain why that's ill-considered at best.
Anyway, refusing to fill it out immediately escalated to a disciplinary meeting with the director.
The director was a trans woman themselves, just not good at their job. At least they recognized the issue when was pointed out to them in that meeting, but this was just the tip of the iceberg for silly changes they pushed.
This isn't a good example, because this isn't "walking on eggshells", this is an example of a misguided policy that has unintended consequences, and in your own example, when they understood the unintended consequences, they removed this.
Sure, this person was probably bad at their job, and that's problematic, but this isn't an example of someone being fired because they said something non-problematic.
I’m not willing to provide examples, because they would identify me. I’m not willing to identify myself because I’m not comfortable doing so.
Your response - “You're saying you feel excluded because you can't tell racist jokes?” - is a sufficient example of my point. Not only did I not imply that, but “racist jokes” aren’t even relevant to the conversation.
I refuse to defend myself against completely unfounded allegations.
It means that you were not really looking, because you could easily find examples that caused the chilling effect (even if it did not cause the firing, but a simple HR talk).
How about you check the content of DEI indoctrination classes, what constitutes offense? Like 2 people talking and the 3rd overhearing is a violation. Like not playing with the fantasies and embracing reality is a violation. Being against (the "wrong one") discrimination is a violation. Like communicating too much with a woman is a violation as is talking too little. Don't let me started on a microaggression BS. In general, it is a violation if any delusional person decides to be offended, no matter the reality.
Did you know that liking progress, efficiency, technology, as well as simply being on time is a core of white suppremacy culture that is improperly and racially being imposed on the Black population? Now that you know (like we estsblished, the opinion of only one minority person like myself is enough to make it a fact) that you are a racist, you must repent.
Your clear dishonesty and bad-faith acting is what causes people to not engage you, not the lack of examples.
I have taken the classes and it really isn't as hard to follow the guidelines as you seem to be painting it.
> Like 2 people talking and the 3rd overhearing is a violation
This is the principle that "locker-room talk" in the workplace is not okay, and that's a good principle. Yes, it's not okay to have a "just us guys" conversation because the content of the conversation is not acceptable in the workplace. The fact a third-party overhearing it gets it reported isn't the issue.
> Like not playing with the fantasies and embracing reality is a violation
You'll have to be more specific about what fantasies you mean. I'm pretty sure I know, but you are continuing to dance around it and your reluctance to name words strongly suggests you know your opinion is unwelcome in polite society.
> Being against (the "wrong one") discrimination is a violation
Again, you'll have to be more clear. Sounds like you're toeing the line Damore toed before Google fired him.
> Like communicating too much with a woman is a violation as is talking too little
Neither of these are violations, and I don't think I know how someone concludes they are.
> Don't [g]et me started on [] microaggression BS
Microaggression theory is grounded in research dating back to the 1970s. Do you have some specific concerns with the research or its interpretation? The theory seems pretty sound from where I sit, but maybe I've missed something.
> Did you know that liking progress, efficiency, technology, as well as simply being on time is a core of white suppremacy culture that is improperly and racially being imposed on the Black population?
That's not at all what anyone has said. You are misinterpreting several layers of information that suggest to me that your frustration is second-hand. I'm going to have to call for a "cite your sources" on this claim.
> In general, it is a violation if any delusional person decides to be offended, no matter the reality.
> Like not playing with the fantasies and embracing reality is a violation.
What does this even mean? Can you give me one specific concrete example of what you want to say in the workplace that you think will end up in a conversation with HR?
I have gone through literally all the same corporate training everyone else has for 20 years across 5 different companies. I have always worked in fairly diverse places, and have never once experienced what you're talking about.
It might just be useless. Maybe 50% of woman are not as interested in the same topics as 50% of the man. Maybe it's ok and natural that man and woman have other talents / interests / perception / interpretation of things etc. Maybe we can appreciate our differences instead of forcefully trying to mold everything into the same shape?
These policies aren't about perfectly equal representation. It's about equal opportunity. That women you want to do the job get equal opportunities to men.
"Just asking questions" sounds innocent until you see that the questions being asked have insinuations behind them. He was asking questions that implied that women and non-white people are less intelligent.
Phrasing outright racism/sexism in the form of a question seems to make it OK with other folks who tend to share the same mindset, but it isn't (and shouldn't be) effective in the workplace.
The devil doesn't need an advocate; especially not in a workplace.
> He was asking questions that implied that women and non-white people are less intelligent.
His questions did not carry any such implication and that is a blatant misrepresentation of the argument he was making. I've been over this so many times in the past and I keep being told that the words I read don't mean what they very obviously mean. (I'm accustomed to that being called "gaslighting" when it goes the other way, inaccurate as that is.)
Software quality has been on a downhill trend that's steepened noticeably in the past ~15 years. Doesn't take a genius to put two and two together and see what's really happening but they'd rather we ignore the politically inconvenient elephant in the room.
Your downvotes don't matter, we see the truth regardless.
No, it's the focus on whatever rainbow-coloured culture war crap that has nothing to do with software engineering that's creating a distraction and allowing incompetence to thrive.
I don't care if developers are cis trans black white male female or dogs[1] if they are competent. But there seems to be a recent trend of some who cry discrimination when their sub-par work is called out.
> But there seems to be a recent trend of some who cry discrimination when their sub-par work is called out.
This sounds like you worked with or heard about 1 trans person who did shoddy work and now it's a "recent trend" that all trans software devs are saying it's discrimination.
Yeah, it's usually white guys complaining that they got passed over for some trans person or whatever who insist that there's discrimination when they get called out for sub-par work.
I actually think that part of the increased prevalence of trans women (i.e. AMAB people who identify as women) in the software industry, is AMAB people who would otherwise be considered men for DEI purposes changing their own conception of their own gender in a way that would make them be counted as women for DEI purposes. I don't think this is the only thing driving gender transition in a general sense, but I know a fair number of trans women and other AMAB genderqueer people in programming-adjacent spaces, and I suspect that the general cultural currents that incentivize gender-based DEI programs also affect people who are otherwise gender-questioning in some fashion.
----
"The doctors are sympathetic, and I think some of them even understand—regardless, they can offer no solace beyond the chemical. They are too kind to resent, but my envy is palpable. One, a trans woman, is especially gentle; perhaps because her own frustrations mirror mine, our cognitive distance sabotaging her authenticity."
- https://ctrlcreep.substack.com/p/knowing-ones-place
Please put two and two together for the rest of us clowns who can’t quite figure it out. State your beliefs plainly so we can come up with some solutions.
So your assertion is that trans people, gay people, people of color, and women are inherently worse at engineering jobs then straight white men, and companies/institutions that hire them are somehow producing worse software? Ignoring all other economic and technological trends that have materialized over the last two decades?
Also, just for the record, some of the most brilliant engineers I have worked with in my time fall into many of those categories.
Jumping in here. Nobody (or almost nobody) is saying that these demographics are inherently worse engineers. But the policies to promote them are inherently discriminatory. You can't promote people based on what they look like without compromising on other attributes like skill. There are companies out there literally saying "We need less white people" and listing off every possible demographic as "welcome" except for white men, in the job posting.
Every single one of these policies that I've seen over the last 20 years, including my role as a hiring manager in my past career, were aimed at leveling the playing field and providing equal opportunities to people who aren't in the majority. The only effect I've seen is that now people who look like me actually have to compete with others.
Edit: For the record I'm asking for links from reputable companies who would realistically be setting the tone for the industry. Not some random ass listing for contract work.
Other companies I can think of are Google and Microsoft. Many huge open-source projects have openly promoted specific racial outcomes. I might dig up links later but if you actually care about this stuff, Lunduke is a great source of references.
>Every single one of these policies that I've seen over the last 20 years, including my role as a hiring manager in my past career, were aimed at leveling the playing field and providing equal opportunities to people who aren't in the majority.
That is how it's sold, but in practice it means you have to turn down perfectly good white people (especially white men) to get arbitrary demographic outcomes. If 13% of the population is black and almost none of them study engineering, you won't be able to get 13% representation without passing up on better white candidates. The same can be said about women and other minorities. Different demographics have different preferences and that is reflected in what they study and how hard they work at it. Yet we are supposed to think there is something nefarious if there is even a minor discrepancy in outcomes. Give me a break. This isn't the 1950s. Nobody would risk discriminating against a minority because it could cause a lawsuit. But discrimination against whites and men is not treated the same way, even when it can be proved positively. One of those 3 lawsuits against IBM was dismissed by an activist judge with a one-sentence non-explanation for example. If you complain about this stuff publicly your career is going to be damaged and everyone will at best think you are a bad sport.
You're specific statement was that companies were listing job postings saying white men weren't welcome. I don't see any evidence of that.
I'm going to try very very hard to ignore the fact it was James O'Keefe that "broke" that story. He's only one step above Info Wars when it comes to being a reliable source, and it's well established he doctors videos to fit his narrative.
But for the sake of argument, let's assume that IBM did do something illegal here: they deserve to be sued and the person who was discriminated against is entitled to some kind of compensation (regardless of race/gender). But that's hardly evidence of some grand conspiracy against white men.
But maybe we can approach this conversation from a different angle. You clearly have a different view from me, so let's try to build up from some common starting place
Would you say it's a reasonable assertion that someone born into immense wealth and privilege (regardless of race/gender/sexual orientation) has substantially more opportunities in their life then someone born in abject poverty?
>You're specific statement was that companies were listing job postings saying white men weren't welcome. I don't see any evidence of that.
Sorry, I don't have time to satisfy arbitrary demands like this. Job postings are ephemeral anyway. There have been articles written about this but I don't have links, and the way you're coming at me tells me you will never be satisfied.
>I'm going to try very very hard to ignore the fact it was James O'Keefe that "broke" that story. He's only one step above Info Wars when it comes to being a reliable source, and it's well established he doctors videos to fit his narrative.
O'Keefe did not originate this story. Lunduke gets a number of leaks himself. If you expect these maverick journalists to be well-liked, you're being totally unreasonable.
>But for the sake of argument, let's assume that IBM did do something illegal here: they deserve to be sued and the person who was discriminated against is entitled to some kind of compensation (regardless of race/gender). But that's hardly evidence of some grand conspiracy against white men.
CEOs of companies saying out in the open that they want more "representation" and that there are bonuses for hiring minorities not good enough? There are billions of dollars being spent specifically to attack whites and white men specifically, and to discourage whites from forming families. I'm not going to argue with you on this point. This should be rather obvious.
>Would you say it's a reasonable assertion that someone born into immense wealth and privilege (regardless of race/gender/sexual orientation) has substantially more opportunities in their life then someone born in abject poverty?
I know exactly where you want to take this and let me stop you right there. Would you agree that, assuming we are allocating financial assistance to poor people, that all equally poor people are equally deserving of help regardless of what they look like, or what is between their legs, or who they like to sleep with?
Anything that tries to blame present-day whites for crimes of the past is effectively collective punishment. Meanwhile, you can't even extract retribution from the children of convicted criminals at present, yet we are supposed to take the blame for a few individuals in the past based on the mere fact that they look like us? There is no evidence of widespread collusion against minorities at present. To the very limited extent you might argue that, I could argue that people of other demographics prefer their own consistently.
I don't actually want to continue this discussion lol. It's too tedious and I don't expect to convince you of anything based on how you write. But hopefully some of what I've said will lead you to reconsider some of your mainstream beliefs.
I remember attending a company meeting a few years ago where our Chief People Officer announced in front of everyone that a new C-level role was open to run our IT organization and that it was exclusively open to women of color.
I remember thinking to myself: "Woah, that's not only extremely illegal but also I potentially would qualify for such a role without said requirement. I wish I'd recorded that."
The person they hired ended up being a disaster in the two years she was with us and she hired an entire organization underneath her that was exclusively of her own ethnicity...and I don't mean her country but her own ethnic group within that country.
In some countries they've tried to mandate that some percentage of the executive board or C-level is women. That should be illegal. Businesses want the best people for the job. If women were actually discriminated against, a competitor could scoop them all up and make major profits. It's all political theater to get female votes at the expense of men and society as a whole.
> California passed Senate Bill 826 in October 2018, mandating gender diversity on the boards of public companies headquartered in California. The bill set deadlines in 2019 (for two women on five-person boards) and 2021 (for three women on seven-person boards).[66] It was challenged as unconstitutional on the grounds of violating equal protection.[67] The District Court ruled the challengers did not have standing, but was overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The District Court then denied a preliminary injunction. It is now pending another appeal.[68] A separate lawsuit found the law unconstitutional on May 13, 2022.[69]
> In 2020, California passed Assembly Bill 979, requiring publicly held companies headquartered in California to include board members from underrepresented communities. The law requires at least one director from an underrepresented community by the end of 2021, and up to three, depending on board size, by the end of 2022.[70] The term "underrepresented community" is defined as "an individual who self‑identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, or who self‑identifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender."[71] The law was ruled unconstitutional on April 1, 2022.
The government shouldn’t be spending itself further into unsustainable debt. And state funding of private organizations will always be subject to the politics of the state, leaking those policies into the organizations they fund. Avoiding both is a net win for everyone, so this is a great outcome.
Funding supply chain security for one of the most popular open source ecosystems in the world isn’t even a rounding error on the budget.
The debt increases are a political choice: the budget was balanced at the turn of the century, which was used as the pretext for cutting taxes to a level which ensured the problems we’re seeing now based on highly unrealistic growth projections. Cutting all funding on open source, or science, or foreign aid, or even all of those combined is a drop in the bucket compared to our cost of healthcare being whole multiples higher than in our peer countries.
They announced grassroots donations for 10% of the total. That’s good, but still short of where it should be for something so popular.
I think of it like crime or natural disaster: a PyPI compromise could easily cause economic damages on the order of a bad storm or small terrorist attack. Collectively we spend billions trying to mitigate those societally rather than telling each person to defend themselves, and this feels like the same idea adapted to a different context.
I think you’ve badly misread the numbers here: donors have only covered a small fraction of what this NSF grant would have covered.
(And of course, it should go without saying that relying on the public to react to the government’s capricious behavior does not make for a stable funding situation for a nonprofit.)
Externalizing responsibility while taking the value of things and calling that a net win until the consequences come up seems short sighted.
Hopefully nobody else funds this critical infrastructure piece of both the government and private sector software world. Especially someone of a country/color/gender you don't like.
All they had to do, was say "yes, we'll take the DEI sign down, and reiterate that we accept and support everyone and don't discriminate." Heck they could have made their website background a flaming, dynamic, neon rainbow for all the government cared. A $1.5MM ideological mistake.
> This restriction would apply not only to the security work directly funded by the grant, but to any and all activity of the PSF as a whole. Further, violation of this term gave the NSF the right to “claw back” previously approved and transferred funds. This would create a situation where money we’d already spent could be taken back, which would be an enormous, open-ended financial risk.
This Admin has shown that it's willing to do/say what it wants; there is nothing to stop it from accusing PSF, without having to provide evidence, that it had violated the terms, and then take the money back. It's a risk they were right not to take.
I dug a bit more and see that PSF is so DEI oriented at the core, that it would have affected the way they literally operated: PyLadies, PyCon US diversity work, and active outreaches and other activities/groups for DEI. I also see that DEI is literally part of their foundational mission, and the other happens to be developing Python.
Python underwent one of the most poorly conceived backwards incompatible version updates of any language. I believe that it did irreparable damage to Python's position as an application making or web stack language.
Yet today, it is still one of the most popular languages out there. I believe you can place this popularity at the feet of its outreach programs, which parlaid into being able to find new niches which it is currently thriving in.
So many things could get flagged as "DEI" under this Admin:
- PyGirls: DEI
- Girls Who Code: DEI
- Free Intro to CS classes in poor neighborhoods: DEI
- Free Coding Camps for low income families: DEI
- Africa Kids Code: DEI
- Coding Classes in Spanish: DEI
etc.
- Not coding, but my kids' chess tournament organizers waive tournament fees for girls and kids from low income families: DEI
If the foundation's core mission is to promote and support Python to as many people as possible, that includes people who would not normally be taking CS classes in schools or have access to resources, then that is DEI.
Yeah, after what they did to Tim Peters in recent times, I don't see myself donating.
Can you clarify what you’re referring to?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41234180
This is why most organizations take a blind eye when popular people in their community behave badly; if they even so much as give them a three-month ban from the forum, people will keep bringing it up years later.
The argument you are making here is incredibly disingenuous.
The facts matter. Tim Peters did not behave badly. The reasoning given for his suspension misrepresented the apparent evidence, vaguely alluded to unproven private activity, and alleged harm in clearly benign actions.
Tim Peters preserved many of his removed posts, along with other relevant information, on a blog (https://tim-one.github.io/) which was largely following my lead in writing about my own prior ban from the forum (https://zahlman.github.io/posts/2024/07/31/an-open-letter-to... ; https://zahlman.github.io/posts/2024/08/10/open-letter-psf-c...) and preserving my own related deleted posts (https://zahlman.github.io/dpo_archive/). It's clear to me, from reading everything (much of which I saw pre-deletion; and also including things that were left up) that at least part of what people objected to in Mr. Peters' "conduct" is that he defended me (despite having many ideological disagreements with me).
I claim that I, too, did not behave badly. In particular, in "recommending" my ban, the Code of Conduct Work Group (which is unelected, and has considerable crossover with paid PSF staff; and to my understanding gets paid in some circumstances for code of conduct enforcement work even as the actual core developers are almost all volunteers) made bizarre mischaracterizations of my complaints — going so far as to falsely ascribe to me terminology that I do not use on principle.
You, specifically, should know about these sorts of things because you comment in these discussions all the time. For example, you participated in https://discuss.python.org/t/shedding-light-on-a-three-month... and your posts there demonstrate intimate familiarity with the situation, with quotes like "I suppose I have to point out that “This whole debacle…” wasn’t referring to just Tim personally and not just this one bylaw change but rather referring to, well, gestures to the last two months." (I remember reading that post, not logged in of course, back when you made it.)
You have seen the list of charges in https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co... so I think you reasonably should understand my position: to the extent that the referents of any of these actions were ever identified, the description is either nonsense or does not point at anything any reasonable person could consider actionable. If you disagree, please be concrete. The entire reason for the "endless litigation" you have repeatedly complained about is the lack of anyone on your side making any clear, understandable argument that anything Tim Peters did at any point was actually wrong. The closest I've seen to such an argument comes from ... Tim Peters (https://tim-one.github.io/psf/meaculpa), and frankly I think it's far too self-effacing.
This is why folks can't take yall seriously when discussing code of conduct. This person has a history of being shitty, and they used the CoC to enforce a (temporary!) ban, citing the rules he violated. If the CoC didn't exist, you'd be screaming "he didn't do anything wrong", but obviously, according to the well posted rules, he did, and they enforced those rules for the good of the community.
The reality of the situation is that yall don't want to be excluded from communities for being racist, misogynistic, or creepy.
I looked into the issues listed ( https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co... ) and the surrounding context, and they all looked tenuous. I'd expect to see at see at least some clear cases.
I think moderation and CoCs are needed, but this example looks to be an example of their misuse.
It's been over a year, and they still haven't provided any tangible examples to support their claims. The best they could come up with was something like "he used the wink emoji" I think. There have been hundreds of posts, and many community members have demanded either evidence to back up those accusations or a public apology to Tim and their removal. But of course, those people are racist, misogynist, or creeps so nothing came out of it.
On the contrary! https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestr...
What a good post and what a sad decision.
Thanks for the link, I was not aware of this story.
The steering committee folks sound like a microcosm of a communist poliburo. Aiming for who can be the most offended over imaginary slights.
I'm glad as An American tax payer that we're not funding an organization with such petty politics and discriminatory behaviors.
Tim sounds similar to John Carmack recent she post about Meta:
> I wish I could drop (so many of) my old internal posts publicly, since I don’t really have the incentive to relitigate the arguments today – they were carefully considered and prescient. They also got me reported to HR by the manager of the XROS effort for supposedly making his team members feel bad
https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1961172409920491849
And it's not only limited to python. Same things happened to perl, ruby, node, and even in some film communities which I was member of.
Once you have such a committee or COC, game over.
If I may ask, what are some better alternatives than commitee's or Code of conducts which can work?
Or is it just a equlibra of just that they might be the best thing we have got currently or something similar?
I've come to the conclusion that this is how it needs to work:
1. As the first person on the project, assume BDFL status and prepare to act that way as soon as you consider accepting a PR.
2. As a person, make sure you strongly understand what your moral values are, and why you hold them.
3. Proactively write your own Code of Conduct from scratch. It's important to have one so that you will not be pressured to use someone else's. It's important to ensure that it reflects your own values, not those of some activist organization (or another project that has been co-opted). Make it simple, but feel free to refer to additional documents. https://compass.naivete.me/ can be considered an example (this is not an endorsement, and again my recommendation is to write it yourself from scratch).
4. Do not have an "Enforcement Procedures" document, and actively reject any such proposal. The interpretation of your code of conduct should be apparent from the text itself, given a reasonable-person standard; you do not need to try to formalize the notion of a reasonable person.
5. If people think you are being unreasonable in your project governance, take that discussion somewhere else.
6. Remember at all times that everyone is free to fork your project. If people wish to do this over a governance dispute, it would be better for it to happen now than later. Do not try to prevent this from happening: do not attack the efforts of others (as has happened to XLibre), and also do not negotiate with others out of fear that they might start a fork. If they start a fork it is of no concern to you.
7. Only dictatorships and democracies are stable. While you are in charge, power rests only in those you directly appoint, and you may revoke this if necessary. When you are ready to leave, unless you have in mind a 100% trusted successor, ensure that your replacement is elected and that the project has a charter such that power can only rest with elected individuals.
Not having such a committee in power and most likely no COC. The FSF's Kindness COC sounds good though.
Within perl we treated conference abuse privately in a seperate nonpublic group, but never mailinglist outbursts. This group had no power over anyone else. Esp. over devs with different opinions, who critized core devs over their work.
Glad to hear one programming community is handling the issues in what sounds like a healthy way.
It also requires actual human effort though, so it's difficult to do. People hate doing difficult things and prefer to be part of "witch hunts" because they're easy IMHO. Discussion and discourse is key.
No, this was past tense. It went south thereafter, even worse than python.
Asking for the right one-size-fits-all system skips doing the systems thinking up front.
A failure mode with a lot of community management systems is that they're adopted because they have a general vibe of keeping the bad people out. And that vibe will see any criticism of the community management document/team/actions as a way to sneak the bad people in.
Imagine I told you I found a rando discord server dedicated to a tabletop RPG I love, but complained that the moderation team was a clique. I claimed that I feel forced to fit in by pandering to their sensibilities and biting my tongue on other topics even if they're just flat out provably wrong. Nobody would assume I'm just salty because I secretly want to post porn, cuss and be racist in #general. Because we all know discord mods are notoriously petty tyrants.
Now give that discord community a github page and copy-paste in an HR document. The way expectations snap into treating them like levelheaded professionals with unassailable intentions and righteous goals is the reason this topic always goes nowhere.
If Tim Peters has a "history of being shitty", I'd expect Wikipedia to mention it. But his article is clean, if not golden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Peters_(software_engineer). The only thing I've heard is that he's a bit neurodivergent/socially awkward, which I thought we were suppose to be welcoming and inclusive of.
The reality is that you may be confusing a victim with your political enemies.
While Wikipedia is considered a source of truth, is it a moderated source of whatever those in power allow to be written there.
Definitely true. Wikipedia has sensitivities reflecting their most dedicated (& extremely online) administrators. Alert & keen for some topics while inert & hostile to others.
I use their bias sometimes for detection. For example, the GP here advances a melodramatic allegation, which someone from their Wikipedian tribe would certainly have documented-- if the evidence aligned with their bias.
I wouldn't expect it to show up on their Wikipedia page, because Wikipedia has a high barrier for what they consider reliable information, and they wouldn't use email list postings, or personal accounts of behavior in what they'd include. This person isn't really relevant enough for his behavior to show up in the news.
But, the employees at the foundation, who are responsible for keeping the community healthy, and for enforcing policies, would absolutely take complaints, then use personal accounts, email list history, chat history, and such. It's effectively like how HR works.
> The only thing I've heard
Right, because you're talking to the wrong people, and you're ignoring the fact that he has had folks complain about his behavior, and you're also ignoring his email list and chat history, which you could go look at.
You're acting like this is some kind of witch hunt, when it's simply "HR" enforcing "employment handbook" standards. It just happens to be that this is a set of volunteers, rather than employees.
> because you're talking to the wrong people, and you're ignoring the fact that he has had folks complain about his behavior, and you're also ignoring his email list and chat history, which you could go look at.
Can you provide any concrete evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever?
For example, Mr. Peters has published comments of his that were removed from the pertinent discussions, and I can vouch for their accuracy from my own recollection. (Since the Discourse forum can also be used via mailing list, and emails cannot be un-sent, presumably many other people can corroborate via their own local backups, too.) Can you find anything in them to suggest wrongdoing?
> and you're also ignoring his email list and chat history, which you could go look at.
I'm not the person you replied to but I've just spent a bunch of time looking at (what seem to be) the relevant posts on https://discuss.python.org/, along with a couple of external posts about the ban, and I've yet to find anything that looks like a pattern of shitty behaviour on the part of Tim Peters. I wasn't previously aware of him and I obviously may have missed something important, so I ask this in good faith: can you point to some of the specific emails/chats you had in mind? (I'm happy not to argue the point if you'd prefer not to; I'd just like to see the strongest anti-Peters evidence.)
I was looking for a credible source, which you have not supplied.
The threads you've waved at do not show Tim to be the "racist, sexist or creep" that you've insinuated. Rather, they show a committee that can't handle questions, abuses its own rules, and hides behind HR & secret "complaints".
Of course, that's just my opinion from skimming. It'd be better to have someone credible give honest evidence, instead of someone defaming & blaming while projecting their bigotry onto others.
> This person has a history of being shitty
All evidence I have seen points to the contrary.
> citing the rules he violated
I wish I could have the graciousness of Tim Peters. Those accusations were not made in good faith.
> This person has a history of being shitty,
No, he does not. He has been a pillar of the community since the beginning, and well loved by many. He has also been trusted with various forms of moderation authority in the past, and his decisions were respected at the time.
> and they used the CoC to enforce a (temporary!) ban, citing the rules he violated.
Please read https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co..., and then https://tim-one.github.io/psf/crimes.html . Mr. Peters is, if anything, overly self-critical here. He quite frankly did nothing wrong. The supposed "rule violations" include things that no reasonable person could actually object to, as well as complete mischaracterizations of the observable facts. In some places, multiple points appear to refer to the same action. In some places it's unclear what is referred to and there has never been any official explanation. In no case is any evidence provided.
> If the CoC didn't exist, you'd be screaming "he didn't do anything wrong"
I am saying it (your use of the word "screaming" here is demeaning, substance-less rhetoric) because it is in fact the case. Many of the cited "violations" don't actually go against the Code of Conduct (https://policies.python.org/python.org/code-of-conduct/), even if they were true and accurate.
> but obviously, according to the well posted rules, he did
It is not obvious, because it is incorrect.
> and they enforced those rules for the good of the community.
No useful purpose was served by this suspension.
> The reality of the situation is that yall don't want to be excluded from communities for being racist, misogynistic, or creepy.
This accusation is baseless, incorrect, and offensive.
The reality is that they go after intelligent people and political opponents on specious grounds because they are jealous and want to preserve their own power.
You can dig up any number of posts on anyone, as Richelieu has pointed out pre-Internet.
Oh, thank you for reminding me they did that.
I need to double my donation.
Can you explain where Tim Peters did anything wrong?
Not my job. You're welcome to draw your own conclusions from the public record as I have. The Foundation laid it out pretty clearly when they suspended him (https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co...).
I wonder is this something all grants have now? edit: yep that seems to be the case https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/gc1-may25.pdf
:\ just finished applying for an NSF grant. I've got to look into other sources of funding.
Many of the comments here are disappointing. Regardless of your opinion of the PSF or its leadership, you should be opposed to this kind of clawback threat because it nakedly represents an attempt to place a non-profit in a double bind: even attempting to comply with these requirements would allow a politicized IRA to claim that the PSF is failing to uphold its stated mission.
The evidence strongly suggests to me that the PSF knew, or reasonably ought to have known, the terms of the agreement months ago, which makes the current activity read very much like a publicity stunt (after realizing they wouldn't be able to take the money).
We are talking about a grant here. I can't see anything wrong with offering someone money that comes with strings attached, when you don't owe anything in the first place. Especially when the offer is being made generally rather than targeting anyone in particular.
In my assessment, the "stated mission" reflects politics that indirectly resulted in harm to me personally, perpetrated by the PSF's Code of Conduct Work Group. The way that this "mission" is presented is in line with common statements that the administration has identified as discriminatory, and I believe they are justified in coming to that conclusion. The PSF represents it as something simple and agreeable; but while I indeed agree with the idea they represent it as, in practice I have seen it mean something very different, and objectionable. In making this representation I find that they commonly insinuate salacious, untrue things about people with value systems like my own, and I consider that representation to be simply dishonest.
The Work Group in question has a document of "Enforcement Procedures" for the Code of Conduct. I determined that these procedures may lead to making decisions that directly contradict what the Code of Conduct says. When I pointed this out, I was baselessly accused of citing previous (unspecified) moderation action against me as examples of the phenomenon that the Code of Conduct forbids but the Enforcement Procedures require ignoring. In so doing, it was proposed that I characterized these actions in terms that I explicitly reject using. (In fact, the main point of my post was to reject the term — as it is one commonly used in strawman representations of my position.)
Organizations should avoid funding by the government whenever possible. It creates incentives for the organization to align with the politics of the government. I am all for this outcome, as it’s a net win for PSF and any organization that can fund itself
But if they don't get it from the government, they'll get it somewhere else, and then that will create incentives for the organization to align with the politics of whoever gives them the money. There's no escaping the implicit dependence that comes with accepting money.
I think we just need to reduce the amount of discretion involved in government action of all kinds.
> But if they don't get it from the government, they'll get it somewhere else
It's not an equal comparison. The biggest governments in the world don't need anymore consolidated power.
> I think we just need to reduce the amount of discretion involved in government action of all kinds.
This we both agree on.
> There's no escaping the implicit dependence that comes with accepting money.
And, at least, the government was elected and has votes to back its political power.
Other sources usually use money to back their political power, which is another problem altogether - political power should NEVER come solely from money.
Regardless of how you feel about the nature of government funding, you should be able to cogitate a strong argument for the U.S. government not playing “gotcha” games with its funding.
The problem is that the population of the US is itself polarized, and different factions want the government to be doing extremely different things with its funds. If faction A has successfully gotten the US federal government to fund something for a long time, and faction B hates that thing, campaigns on ending the funding, and then does end it once they win an election and take power - then a demand for the US to not play gotcha games with its funding is isomorphic to a demand from political faction A to keep some of their preferred policies in place even though they are not currently in a position of electoral power.
Yes, outcomes like these are the best way to avoid dependency on a central authority. I’m more for moving away from the ability of such authorities to exercise such power, rather than hoping they don’t abuse it. They certainly will eventually
This is exactly what set OpenBSD back in the early 2000s.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/defense-agency-pulls-openbsd-f...
Maybe that $500k that was earmarked for OpenSSL vulnerability testing would have found Heartbleed.
> you should be opposed to this kind of clawback threat because it nakedly represents an attempt to place a non-profit in a double bind
The clawback is this sentence, yes? "NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and recover all funds if recipients, during the term of this award, operate any program in violation of Federal anti- discriminatory laws or engage in a prohibited boycott."
How exactly is "you must follow anti-discrimination law" a "naked" attempt at a double-bind?
(And, um, I'd be more worried about that "prohibited boycott" thing. It's mentioned explicitly in the sentence with the clawback, and I don't see where it's defined.)
Boycotting Israel, for example, is a prohibited boycott.
This is a little-known but long-established part of US policy; see https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/enforcement/oac for more details. My employer actually has a reminder in the legal trainings of our corporate responsibilities under these policies (and yes, it rubs me the wrong way).
> Many of the comments here are disappointing
Disappointing?
This is what Hacker News has been for at least a decade. Why would you expect any better?
It’s been disappointing to you for at least a decade and yet you keep using it? Blink twice if the mods have been keeping you imprisoned in the server closet and forcing you to speak to them in Arc
When there's a car crash, somebody's got to put out the traffic cones.
Immediatly though of donating > $1.5M to remove that indentation hell.
What do you mean it's in their values?
More seriously, I can only respect someone (natural or legal) who refuses 7 figures for their values, which ever those might be and whether I share them or not.
Many people here have pointed out in response to flagged comments that the decision was legalistic, bureaucratic and self-preserving. I.e., the PSF did not want to enter a territory where it might be forced to repay the grant.
The money was earmarked for PyPI and the refusal did not impact those who have other positions in the PSF. In 2020, when it was politically safe, the PSF made several BLM support statements. There are no statements about people of color in Gaza or extrajudicial killings off the Venezuelan coast in 2025.
Moreover, they got political capital from this action for an organization that was/is severely damaged by the ruthless and libelous leadership. And they prepare for another pendulum swing that might materialize in the 2026 midterms.
All in all, I'm unimpressed.
Culture wars are intentionally engineered by the rich to distract everyone else from forming class solidarity against them. And it is amazingly effective.
No, people actually disagree about cultural changes. Not sure what kind of world model you must have in order to believe that ANY society wouldn't suffer from "culture wars" as it evolves. I suppose you believe that the entire prohibition episode in US history was also orchestrated by "the rich"?
Struggling over cultural changes is a real phenomenon and sometimes even worth engaging in.
But ultimately, ideas are secondary to matter. Most people on this planet work for the profits of a very small group. If they weren’t divided, they could easily defeat that small group and organise society for the benefit of the majority.
As Warren Buffet said, class warfare is happening and his class is winning. We should all internalise that and engage in class struggle.
Not if all the culture wars in 2020-2024 received $billions of funding by the same companies who now support Trump.
There is nothing organic about this, and organizations like the PSF play their role by never veering into economic and class warfare territory.
I mean...this thread joins the dozens of others in recent memory that has turned into a war-zone, filled with disposable throwaway accounts and bad faith downvoting that will almost certainly go unpunished.
Considering the kind of money behind YCombinator, they're not exactly beating the rap.
There are two huge problems with these highly intrusive grant requirements that are different than previous Admin's DEI statements (which people sometimes point to, in a "what about ..."):
- they apply to _all_ of the org's activities, whereas previous statements only applied to the grant itself (it had to be used in X way) ; this is what PSF found untenable
- the gov can claw back the money if they deem you were violating the reqs pretty much as their discretion; while this might seem unlikely, the Trump admin is highly aggressive towards universities, withholding funding in a way that has not been done before under a bogus excuse of anti-semitism. It shows they will have their way and there's nothing you will be able to do about it.
I've been really sad to see Python's stance on this. It really shows that management is out of touch with reality.
I think "The US government is too unpredictable at this time to be a trustworthy source of funding" is actually pretty in-touch with reality, unfortunately.
God forbid they stand up for people and fight for an inclusive work environment. How dare they!
The paid staff are, broadly speaking, the ones enforcing the rules (and making PyCon happen). Almost all the actual development is on a volunteer basis, with people operating remotely and submitting PRs to GitHub (where the only people who ever act unprofessional are annoyed bug reporters). What "work environment"?
“Inclusive” - meanwhile, I’ve not felt comfortable at a PSF-sponsored event since 2013, when people started losing their jobs for barely off-color jokes… and for reporting them.
PlayHaven's CEO implied their reasons to fire the employee who made inappropriate jokes at PyCon were not the jokes alone. Most people assumed SendGrid would not have fired the employee who attempted public shaming if she instead reported the jokes. And how were PSF responsible for what PlayHaven and SendGrid did?
You're saying you feel excluded because you can't tell racist jokes?
No, people feel excluded because they are falsely accused of "telling racist jokes" when they objectively do nothing of the sort, meanwhile the people next to them are openly racist (and claim that they are not being racist because their actions are excluded by definition) without penalty.
Also as a reminder: in 2013 at PyCon, Adria Richards overheard people who weren't speaking to her and didn't know she was there, took offense to what they were saying, and ignored all official procedure to complain about it publicly on Twitter instead. That's why people were upset at her.
Chilling effect of the witch hunt by political activists tends to make people be and feel excluded.
Because you can't tell racist jokes?
Constantly waking on eggshells that anything you say could be misinterpreted to be offensive and have career ending repercussions is exhausting.
Now, go on, parrot the same question again. Surely you’ll bait someone into accepting your framing of the issue sooner or later.
What is it that you say on a regular basis that makes you feel like you need to walk on eggshells?
As I've said many times in the comments. I have 20+ years experience working for corporations. All through the me too wave, the increase focus on DE&I, and the general move to try and be less exclusionary. I've worked with woman, gay people, trans, and people of just about every ethnicity you could think of. Never once, in all those years, have I ever feared for my job or felt excluded.
Literally the only people I have ever heard complain are the ones I know for a fact tell racist and sexist jokes because they always felt comfortable enough around me to tell them.
If the fact that we are a bit more mindful about being racist and sexist in the work place bothers you, I think you may need to look inward at your own behavior. Not outward.
> What is it that you say on a regular basis that makes you feel like you need to walk on eggshells?
For example, the things James Damore said, that resulted in his firing and which were blatantly misrepresented all over social media and journalism — to the point of people directly quoting things and then asserting that the quote means something other than its actual meaning.
> Never once, in all those years, have I ever feared for my job or felt excluded.
Not even when people assert that discrimination against your kind doesn't count as X-ism?
> Literally the only people I have ever heard complain are the ones I know for a fact tell racist and sexist jokes because they always felt comfortable enough around me to tell them. If the fact that we are a bit more mindful about being racist and sexist in the work place bothers you
You directly equivocate here. If they are telling racist and sexist jokes "around you", that is not doing so "in the work place". Moreover, if they "feel comfortable enough around you to tell them", that requires that you aren't objecting to it.
This is exactly the kind of dishonest manipulative baiting that makes people feel uncomfortable. Absolutely nothing InvertedRhodium said was in any way racist, and your allegations otherwise are both wholly devoid of evidence and against the community standards here.
If you can't make your point without leveling extreme and baseless allegations at fellow posters, that's a good sign that your point is without merit.
I didn't say he was a racist. But we are talking about feeling excluded in environments where the primary change has been it's not longer acceptable to tell racist/sexist jokes or make disparaging comments about others based race/sex/ethnicity.
People have had three opportunities now to give concrete examples of behavior that should be acceptable and makes them feel excluded or like they need to walk on eggshells. Nobody has offered a single thing.
So point blank: What can you not say or do in these environments for fear of reprisal?
> where the primary change has been it's not longer acceptable to tell racist/sexist jokes or make disparaging comments about others based race/sex/ethnicity.
This is simply untrue. Such conduct was already completely and utterly unacceptable prior to "DEI", for decades. These policies have instead enabled disparaging comments about others based on race/sex/ethnicity — in particular, accusing people belonging to certain such groups of being inherently whatever-ist (see for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWoC90bbsdo), while defining away discrimination perpetrated against them (to move back towards the original topic, this claim was repeated many times in the discussion of the removal of references to "Strunk & White" in PEP 8).
> What can you not say or do in these environments for fear of reprisal?
For example, I doubt that you could refuse a request to state your "preferred pronouns", or critique the idea of making such requests or normalizing the culture around them.
Don't agree with the comments above and generally support DEI initiatives, but I also have an example.
A new DEI director joined a previous employer and started a mandatory survey to affirmatively label everyone's trans status. Whatever you entered would be used to auto-update your public info page with details on whether you identified as trans or not, with no opt out. I hope I don't have to explain why that's ill-considered at best.
Anyway, refusing to fill it out immediately escalated to a disciplinary meeting with the director.
Yeah that's pure idiocy.
That's so bad it almost feels like someone trying to out trans people under the guise of DEI.
The director was a trans woman themselves, just not good at their job. At least they recognized the issue when was pointed out to them in that meeting, but this was just the tip of the iceberg for silly changes they pushed.
Yeah that's unfortunate. Hopefully they'll find the right balance. Well intentioned missteps are better then maliciousness I suppose.
There is no difference. Even the worst people in the world easily explain their actions as good or at the very least as not so bad.
This isn't a good example, because this isn't "walking on eggshells", this is an example of a misguided policy that has unintended consequences, and in your own example, when they understood the unintended consequences, they removed this.
Sure, this person was probably bad at their job, and that's problematic, but this isn't an example of someone being fired because they said something non-problematic.
> and in your own example, when they understood the unintended consequences, they removed this.
The example says nothing of the sort.
Lot of people restating their discomfort but no examples.
It suggests they know these are not things to be said in mixed company and the real discomfort is the PSF events have become mixed company for them.
Still nothing. Lol
I'm happy to give people the benefit of the doubt. But this specific topic I don't think I've ever seen someone actually provide a real answer.
I’m not willing to provide examples, because they would identify me. I’m not willing to identify myself because I’m not comfortable doing so.
Your response - “You're saying you feel excluded because you can't tell racist jokes?” - is a sufficient example of my point. Not only did I not imply that, but “racist jokes” aren’t even relevant to the conversation.
I refuse to defend myself against completely unfounded allegations.
It means that you were not really looking, because you could easily find examples that caused the chilling effect (even if it did not cause the firing, but a simple HR talk).
How about you check the content of DEI indoctrination classes, what constitutes offense? Like 2 people talking and the 3rd overhearing is a violation. Like not playing with the fantasies and embracing reality is a violation. Being against (the "wrong one") discrimination is a violation. Like communicating too much with a woman is a violation as is talking too little. Don't let me started on a microaggression BS. In general, it is a violation if any delusional person decides to be offended, no matter the reality.
Did you know that liking progress, efficiency, technology, as well as simply being on time is a core of white suppremacy culture that is improperly and racially being imposed on the Black population? Now that you know (like we estsblished, the opinion of only one minority person like myself is enough to make it a fact) that you are a racist, you must repent.
Your clear dishonesty and bad-faith acting is what causes people to not engage you, not the lack of examples.
I have taken the classes and it really isn't as hard to follow the guidelines as you seem to be painting it.
> Like 2 people talking and the 3rd overhearing is a violation
This is the principle that "locker-room talk" in the workplace is not okay, and that's a good principle. Yes, it's not okay to have a "just us guys" conversation because the content of the conversation is not acceptable in the workplace. The fact a third-party overhearing it gets it reported isn't the issue.
> Like not playing with the fantasies and embracing reality is a violation
You'll have to be more specific about what fantasies you mean. I'm pretty sure I know, but you are continuing to dance around it and your reluctance to name words strongly suggests you know your opinion is unwelcome in polite society.
> Being against (the "wrong one") discrimination is a violation
Again, you'll have to be more clear. Sounds like you're toeing the line Damore toed before Google fired him.
> Like communicating too much with a woman is a violation as is talking too little
Neither of these are violations, and I don't think I know how someone concludes they are.
> Don't [g]et me started on [] microaggression BS
Microaggression theory is grounded in research dating back to the 1970s. Do you have some specific concerns with the research or its interpretation? The theory seems pretty sound from where I sit, but maybe I've missed something.
> Did you know that liking progress, efficiency, technology, as well as simply being on time is a core of white suppremacy culture that is improperly and racially being imposed on the Black population?
That's not at all what anyone has said. You are misinterpreting several layers of information that suggest to me that your frustration is second-hand. I'm going to have to call for a "cite your sources" on this claim.
> In general, it is a violation if any delusional person decides to be offended, no matter the reality.
This is, broadly, untrue.
> Like not playing with the fantasies and embracing reality is a violation.
What does this even mean? Can you give me one specific concrete example of what you want to say in the workplace that you think will end up in a conversation with HR?
I have gone through literally all the same corporate training everyone else has for 20 years across 5 different companies. I have always worked in fairly diverse places, and have never once experienced what you're talking about.
It might just be useless. Maybe 50% of woman are not as interested in the same topics as 50% of the man. Maybe it's ok and natural that man and woman have other talents / interests / perception / interpretation of things etc. Maybe we can appreciate our differences instead of forcefully trying to mold everything into the same shape?
These policies aren't about perfectly equal representation. It's about equal opportunity. That women you want to do the job get equal opportunities to men.
They already had, from the perspective of the organization, equal opportunities before the policies in question were enacted.
Didn't James Damore get himself fired "just asking these questions" at Google?
"Just asking questions" sounds innocent until you see that the questions being asked have insinuations behind them. He was asking questions that implied that women and non-white people are less intelligent.
Phrasing outright racism/sexism in the form of a question seems to make it OK with other folks who tend to share the same mindset, but it isn't (and shouldn't be) effective in the workplace.
The devil doesn't need an advocate; especially not in a workplace.
> He was asking questions that implied that women and non-white people are less intelligent.
His questions did not carry any such implication and that is a blatant misrepresentation of the argument he was making. I've been over this so many times in the past and I keep being told that the words I read don't mean what they very obviously mean. (I'm accustomed to that being called "gaslighting" when it goes the other way, inaccurate as that is.)
What are your thoughts regarding the NLRB's interpretation of what he wrote?
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4380791-NLRB-Advice-...
Inclusive of idiocy?
Software quality has been on a downhill trend that's steepened noticeably in the past ~15 years. Doesn't take a genius to put two and two together and see what's really happening but they'd rather we ignore the politically inconvenient elephant in the room.
Your downvotes don't matter, we see the truth regardless.
Are you saying you think trans people are causing software quality to decrease? How exactly? Please state your belief clearly.
No, it's the focus on whatever rainbow-coloured culture war crap that has nothing to do with software engineering that's creating a distraction and allowing incompetence to thrive.
I don't care if developers are cis trans black white male female or dogs[1] if they are competent. But there seems to be a recent trend of some who cry discrimination when their sub-par work is called out.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...
> But there seems to be a recent trend of some who cry discrimination when their sub-par work is called out.
This sounds like you worked with or heard about 1 trans person who did shoddy work and now it's a "recent trend" that all trans software devs are saying it's discrimination.
Yeah, it's usually white guys complaining that they got passed over for some trans person or whatever who insist that there's discrimination when they get called out for sub-par work.
I actually think that part of the increased prevalence of trans women (i.e. AMAB people who identify as women) in the software industry, is AMAB people who would otherwise be considered men for DEI purposes changing their own conception of their own gender in a way that would make them be counted as women for DEI purposes. I don't think this is the only thing driving gender transition in a general sense, but I know a fair number of trans women and other AMAB genderqueer people in programming-adjacent spaces, and I suspect that the general cultural currents that incentivize gender-based DEI programs also affect people who are otherwise gender-questioning in some fashion.
----
"The doctors are sympathetic, and I think some of them even understand—regardless, they can offer no solace beyond the chemical. They are too kind to resent, but my envy is palpable. One, a trans woman, is especially gentle; perhaps because her own frustrations mirror mine, our cognitive distance sabotaging her authenticity." - https://ctrlcreep.substack.com/p/knowing-ones-place
Please put two and two together for the rest of us clowns who can’t quite figure it out. State your beliefs plainly so we can come up with some solutions.
... What?
So your assertion is that trans people, gay people, people of color, and women are inherently worse at engineering jobs then straight white men, and companies/institutions that hire them are somehow producing worse software? Ignoring all other economic and technological trends that have materialized over the last two decades?
Also, just for the record, some of the most brilliant engineers I have worked with in my time fall into many of those categories.
Jumping in here. Nobody (or almost nobody) is saying that these demographics are inherently worse engineers. But the policies to promote them are inherently discriminatory. You can't promote people based on what they look like without compromising on other attributes like skill. There are companies out there literally saying "We need less white people" and listing off every possible demographic as "welcome" except for white men, in the job posting.
Care to link to a few?
Every single one of these policies that I've seen over the last 20 years, including my role as a hiring manager in my past career, were aimed at leveling the playing field and providing equal opportunities to people who aren't in the majority. The only effect I've seen is that now people who look like me actually have to compete with others.
Edit: For the record I'm asking for links from reputable companies who would realistically be setting the tone for the industry. Not some random ass listing for contract work.
> were aimed at leveling the playing field and providing equal opportunities to people who aren't in the majority.
If your company was complying with the law, the playing field was already definitionally level.
This outlines 3 separate lawsuits against IBM over this: https://lunduke.locals.com/post/6465642/3-anti-white-discrim...
Other companies I can think of are Google and Microsoft. Many huge open-source projects have openly promoted specific racial outcomes. I might dig up links later but if you actually care about this stuff, Lunduke is a great source of references.
>Every single one of these policies that I've seen over the last 20 years, including my role as a hiring manager in my past career, were aimed at leveling the playing field and providing equal opportunities to people who aren't in the majority.
That is how it's sold, but in practice it means you have to turn down perfectly good white people (especially white men) to get arbitrary demographic outcomes. If 13% of the population is black and almost none of them study engineering, you won't be able to get 13% representation without passing up on better white candidates. The same can be said about women and other minorities. Different demographics have different preferences and that is reflected in what they study and how hard they work at it. Yet we are supposed to think there is something nefarious if there is even a minor discrepancy in outcomes. Give me a break. This isn't the 1950s. Nobody would risk discriminating against a minority because it could cause a lawsuit. But discrimination against whites and men is not treated the same way, even when it can be proved positively. One of those 3 lawsuits against IBM was dismissed by an activist judge with a one-sentence non-explanation for example. If you complain about this stuff publicly your career is going to be damaged and everyone will at best think you are a bad sport.
You're specific statement was that companies were listing job postings saying white men weren't welcome. I don't see any evidence of that.
I'm going to try very very hard to ignore the fact it was James O'Keefe that "broke" that story. He's only one step above Info Wars when it comes to being a reliable source, and it's well established he doctors videos to fit his narrative.
But for the sake of argument, let's assume that IBM did do something illegal here: they deserve to be sued and the person who was discriminated against is entitled to some kind of compensation (regardless of race/gender). But that's hardly evidence of some grand conspiracy against white men.
But maybe we can approach this conversation from a different angle. You clearly have a different view from me, so let's try to build up from some common starting place
Would you say it's a reasonable assertion that someone born into immense wealth and privilege (regardless of race/gender/sexual orientation) has substantially more opportunities in their life then someone born in abject poverty?
>You're specific statement was that companies were listing job postings saying white men weren't welcome. I don't see any evidence of that.
Sorry, I don't have time to satisfy arbitrary demands like this. Job postings are ephemeral anyway. There have been articles written about this but I don't have links, and the way you're coming at me tells me you will never be satisfied.
>I'm going to try very very hard to ignore the fact it was James O'Keefe that "broke" that story. He's only one step above Info Wars when it comes to being a reliable source, and it's well established he doctors videos to fit his narrative.
O'Keefe did not originate this story. Lunduke gets a number of leaks himself. If you expect these maverick journalists to be well-liked, you're being totally unreasonable.
>But for the sake of argument, let's assume that IBM did do something illegal here: they deserve to be sued and the person who was discriminated against is entitled to some kind of compensation (regardless of race/gender). But that's hardly evidence of some grand conspiracy against white men.
CEOs of companies saying out in the open that they want more "representation" and that there are bonuses for hiring minorities not good enough? There are billions of dollars being spent specifically to attack whites and white men specifically, and to discourage whites from forming families. I'm not going to argue with you on this point. This should be rather obvious.
>Would you say it's a reasonable assertion that someone born into immense wealth and privilege (regardless of race/gender/sexual orientation) has substantially more opportunities in their life then someone born in abject poverty?
I know exactly where you want to take this and let me stop you right there. Would you agree that, assuming we are allocating financial assistance to poor people, that all equally poor people are equally deserving of help regardless of what they look like, or what is between their legs, or who they like to sleep with?
Anything that tries to blame present-day whites for crimes of the past is effectively collective punishment. Meanwhile, you can't even extract retribution from the children of convicted criminals at present, yet we are supposed to take the blame for a few individuals in the past based on the mere fact that they look like us? There is no evidence of widespread collusion against minorities at present. To the very limited extent you might argue that, I could argue that people of other demographics prefer their own consistently.
I don't actually want to continue this discussion lol. It's too tedious and I don't expect to convince you of anything based on how you write. But hopefully some of what I've said will lead you to reconsider some of your mainstream beliefs.
I remember attending a company meeting a few years ago where our Chief People Officer announced in front of everyone that a new C-level role was open to run our IT organization and that it was exclusively open to women of color.
I remember thinking to myself: "Woah, that's not only extremely illegal but also I potentially would qualify for such a role without said requirement. I wish I'd recorded that."
The person they hired ended up being a disaster in the two years she was with us and she hired an entire organization underneath her that was exclusively of her own ethnicity...and I don't mean her country but her own ethnic group within that country.
In some countries they've tried to mandate that some percentage of the executive board or C-level is women. That should be illegal. Businesses want the best people for the job. If women were actually discriminated against, a competitor could scoop them all up and make major profits. It's all political theater to get female votes at the expense of men and society as a whole.
The state of California passed two bills attempting to mandate this, both of which were ruled unconstitutional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_representation_on_corpo... :
> California passed Senate Bill 826 in October 2018, mandating gender diversity on the boards of public companies headquartered in California. The bill set deadlines in 2019 (for two women on five-person boards) and 2021 (for three women on seven-person boards).[66] It was challenged as unconstitutional on the grounds of violating equal protection.[67] The District Court ruled the challengers did not have standing, but was overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The District Court then denied a preliminary injunction. It is now pending another appeal.[68] A separate lawsuit found the law unconstitutional on May 13, 2022.[69]
> In 2020, California passed Assembly Bill 979, requiring publicly held companies headquartered in California to include board members from underrepresented communities. The law requires at least one director from an underrepresented community by the end of 2021, and up to three, depending on board size, by the end of 2022.[70] The term "underrepresented community" is defined as "an individual who self‑identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, or who self‑identifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender."[71] The law was ruled unconstitutional on April 1, 2022.
The government shouldn’t be spending itself further into unsustainable debt. And state funding of private organizations will always be subject to the politics of the state, leaking those policies into the organizations they fund. Avoiding both is a net win for everyone, so this is a great outcome.
Funding supply chain security for one of the most popular open source ecosystems in the world isn’t even a rounding error on the budget.
The debt increases are a political choice: the budget was balanced at the turn of the century, which was used as the pretext for cutting taxes to a level which ensured the problems we’re seeing now based on highly unrealistic growth projections. Cutting all funding on open source, or science, or foreign aid, or even all of those combined is a drop in the bucket compared to our cost of healthcare being whole multiples higher than in our peer countries.
And yet, this organization found a way to grow its funding base by avoiding government handouts. It’s a net win
They announced grassroots donations for 10% of the total. That’s good, but still short of where it should be for something so popular.
I think of it like crime or natural disaster: a PyPI compromise could easily cause economic damages on the order of a bad storm or small terrorist attack. Collectively we spend billions trying to mitigate those societally rather than telling each person to defend themselves, and this feels like the same idea adapted to a different context.
I think you’ve badly misread the numbers here: donors have only covered a small fraction of what this NSF grant would have covered.
(And of course, it should go without saying that relying on the public to react to the government’s capricious behavior does not make for a stable funding situation for a nonprofit.)
Externalizing responsibility while taking the value of things and calling that a net win until the consequences come up seems short sighted.
Hopefully nobody else funds this critical infrastructure piece of both the government and private sector software world. Especially someone of a country/color/gender you don't like.
More money to give to Tesla
And Palantir!
All they had to do, was say "yes, we'll take the DEI sign down, and reiterate that we accept and support everyone and don't discriminate." Heck they could have made their website background a flaming, dynamic, neon rainbow for all the government cared. A $1.5MM ideological mistake.
that wasn't the issue, this was the issue:
> This restriction would apply not only to the security work directly funded by the grant, but to any and all activity of the PSF as a whole. Further, violation of this term gave the NSF the right to “claw back” previously approved and transferred funds. This would create a situation where money we’d already spent could be taken back, which would be an enormous, open-ended financial risk.
This Admin has shown that it's willing to do/say what it wants; there is nothing to stop it from accusing PSF, without having to provide evidence, that it had violated the terms, and then take the money back. It's a risk they were right not to take.
I dug a bit more and see that PSF is so DEI oriented at the core, that it would have affected the way they literally operated: PyLadies, PyCon US diversity work, and active outreaches and other activities/groups for DEI. I also see that DEI is literally part of their foundational mission, and the other happens to be developing Python.
I find it difficult to argue with its success.
Python underwent one of the most poorly conceived backwards incompatible version updates of any language. I believe that it did irreparable damage to Python's position as an application making or web stack language.
Yet today, it is still one of the most popular languages out there. I believe you can place this popularity at the feet of its outreach programs, which parlaid into being able to find new niches which it is currently thriving in.
So many things could get flagged as "DEI" under this Admin:
- PyGirls: DEI
- Girls Who Code: DEI
- Free Intro to CS classes in poor neighborhoods: DEI
- Free Coding Camps for low income families: DEI
- Africa Kids Code: DEI
- Coding Classes in Spanish: DEI
etc.
- Not coding, but my kids' chess tournament organizers waive tournament fees for girls and kids from low income families: DEI
If the foundation's core mission is to promote and support Python to as many people as possible, that includes people who would not normally be taking CS classes in schools or have access to resources, then that is DEI.