Notice of Python Software Foundation Bylaws change, effective 10 August 2024

There has been a lot of attention directed at our Bylaws over the last few weeks, and as a result of that conversation, the Board was alerted to a defect in our Bylaws that exposes the Foundation to an unbounded financial liability.

Specifically, Bylaws Article XIII as originally written compels the Python Software Foundation to extend indemnity coverage to individual Members (including our thousands of “Basic Members”) in certain cases, and to advance legal defense expenses to individual Members with surprisingly few restrictions.

Further, the Bylaws compel the Foundation to take out insurance to cover these requirements, however, insurance of this nature is not actually available to 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporations such as the Python Software Foundation to purchase, and thus it is impossible in practice to comply with this requirement.

In the unlikely but not impossible event of the Foundation being called upon to advance such expenses, the potential financial burden would be virtually unlimited, and there would be no recourse to insurance.

As this is an existential threat to the Foundation, the Board has agreed that it must immediately reduce the Foundation’s exposure, and has opted to exercise its ability to amend the Bylaws by a majority vote of the Board directors, rather than by putting it to a vote of the membership, as allowed by Bylaws Article XI.

Acting on legal advice, the full Board has voted unanimously to amend its Bylaws to no longer extend an offer to indemnify, advance legal expenses, or insure Members when they are not serving at the request of the Foundation. The amended Bylaws still allow for indemnification of a much smaller set of individuals acting on behalf of the PSF such as Board Members and officers, which is in line with standard nonprofit governance practices and for which we already hold appropriate insurance.

The full text of the changes can be viewed at https://github.com/python/psf-bylaws/compare/a35a607...298843b

These changes shall become effective on Saturday 10 August 2024, 15 days from the date of this notice.

Any questions about these changes may be sent to psf@python.org. We gladly welcome further suggestions or recommendations for future Bylaws amendments.

Thank you,

The PSF Board of Directors

Python’s Supportive and Welcoming Environment is Tightly Coupled to Its Progress

Python is as popular as it is today because we have gone above and beyond to make this a welcoming community. Being a friendly and supportive community is part of how we are perceived by the wider world and is integral to the wide popularity of Python. We won a “Wonderfully Welcoming Award” last year at GitHub Universe. Over and over again, the tech press refers to Python as a supportive community. We aren’t the fastest, the newest or the best-funded programming language, but we are the most welcoming and supportive. Our philosophy is a big part of why Python is a fantastic choice for not only new programmers, glue programmers, and folks who split their time between research and programming but for everyone who wants to be part of a welcoming community.

We believe to be “welcoming” means to do our best to provide all participants with a safe, civil, and respectful environment when they are engaging with our community - on our forums, at PyCon events, and other spaces that have committed to following our Code of Conduct. That kind of environment doesn’t happen by accident - a lot of people have worked hard over a long time to figure out the best ways to nurture this welcoming quality for the Python community. That work has included drafting and improving the Code of Conduct, crafting and implementing processes for enforcing it, and moderating the various online spaces where it applies. And most importantly the huge, collective effort of individuals across the community, each putting in consistent effort to show up in all the positive ways that make the Python community the warm and welcoming place that we know.

The recent slew of conversations, initially kicked off in response to a bylaws change proposal, has been pretty alienating for many members of our community. They haven’t all posted publicly to explain their feelings, but they have found other ways to let the PSF know how they are feeling.

• After the conversation on PSF-Vote had gotten pretty ugly, forty-five people out of ~1000 unsubscribed. (That list has since been put on announce-only)

• We received a lot of Code of Conduct reports or moderation requests about the PSF-vote mailing list and the discuss.python.org message board conversations. (Several reports have already been acted on or closed and the rest will be soon).

• PSF staff received private feedback that the blanket statements about “neurodiverse people”, the bizarre motives ascribed to the people in charge of the PSF and various volunteers and the sideways comments about the kinds of people making reports were also very off-putting.

As an open source code community, we do most things out in the open which is a fantastic strategy for code. (Many eyes, shallow bugs, etc.) We also try to be transparent about what is going on here at the Foundation and are always working to improve visibility into our policies, current resource levels, spending priorities and aspirations. Sometimes staff and volunteers are a little too busy “doing the work" to “talk about the work” but we do our best to be responsive, especially in the areas that people want to know more about. That said, sometimes things do need to be kept confidential, for privacy, legal, or other good reasons.

Some examples:

• Most Code of Conduct reports – Oftentimes, these reports have the potential to affect both the reporter and the reported person’s reputations and livelihoods so our practice is to keep them confidential when possible to protect everyone involved. Some of you have been here long enough to remember the incident at PyCon US in 2013, an example of the entire internet discussing a Code of Conduct violation that led to negative repercussions for everyone involved, but especially for the person who reported the behavior.

• Legal advice and proceedings – It is an unfortunate fact of the world that the legal system(s) we operate under sometimes require us to keep secret information we might otherwise prefer to disclose, often because doing so could open us up to liability in a way that would create significant risk to the PSF or it could potentially put us in violation of laws or regulation. It’s our responsibility to follow legal guidance about how to protect the Foundation, our resources, and our mission in these situations.

• Mental health, personal history, or disability status – Community members should not, for example, have to disclose their status as neurodivergent or share their history with abuse so that others can decide if they are allowed to be offended. Community members should also not be speculating about other individuals’ characteristics or experience in this regard.

We have a moral imperative – as one of the very best places to bring new people into tech and into open source – to keep being good at welcoming new people. If we do not rise and continue to rise every day to this task, then we are not fulfilling our own mission, “to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers.” Technical skills are a game-changer for the people who acquire them and joining a vast global network of people with similar interests opens many doors. Behavior that contributes to a hostile environment around Python or throws up barriers and obstacles to those who would join the Python community must be addressed because it endangers what we have built here.

Part of the care-taking of a diverse community “where everyone feels welcome” sadly often means asking some people to leave – or at least take a break. This is known as the paradox of tolerance. We can not tolerate intolerance and we will not allow combative and aggressive behavior to ruin the experience in our spaces for everyone else. People do make honest mistakes and don’t always understand the impact that their words have had. All we ask is that as community members we all do our best to adhere to the Code of Conduct we’ve committed to as a community, and that we gracefully accept feedback when our efforts fall short. Sometimes that means learning that the words, assumptions or tone you’re using aren’t coming across the way you’ve intended. When a person’s words and actions repeatedly come in conflict with our community norms and cause harm, and that pattern hasn’t changed in response to feedback – then we have to ask people to take a break or as a last resort to leave the conversation.

Our forum, mailing lists and events will continue to be moderated. We want to thank everyone who contributed positively to the recent conversations and everyone who made the hard choice to write to us to point out off-putting, harmful, unwelcoming or offensive comments. We especially want to thank all the volunteers who serve on the Python Discourse moderation team and our Code of Conduct Working Group. We know it’s been a long couple of weeks, and although your work may occasionally be draining and unpleasant, it is also absolutely essential and endlessly appreciated by the vast majority of the community. Thank you for everything you do!


Sincerely,
Deb Nicholson
Dawn Wages
Tania Allard
KwonHan Bae
Kushal Das
Georgi Ker
Jannis Leidel
Cristián Maureira-Fredes
Christopher Neugebauer
Denny Perez
Cheuk Ting Ho
Simon Willison