Announcing the 2023 PSF Board Election Results!

 

It was a really lively and engaged election process for the PSF Board this year! First of all, we want to thank everyone who ran and was willing to serve on the PSF Board. Even if you were not elected, we appreciate all the time and effort you put into thinking about how to make the PSF better and how to represent the parts of the community that you participate in. We hope that you will continue to think about these issues and share your ideas.

Congratulations to our five new Board members-elect! 

• Cheuk Ting Ho
• Denny Perez
• Georgi Ker
• Christopher Neugebauer
• KwonHan Bae *

We’ll be in touch with all the elected candidates next week to schedule onboarding. * The fifth person is being invited to serve for a year to fill the off-cycle vacancy left by Joannah Nanjekye, who stepped down from the Board.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our outgoing board members for their outstanding service; Dustin Ingram, Joannah Nanjekye, Jeff Triplett, Thomas Wouters and Nina Zakharenko. They served on the PSF Board through a particularly eventful time; helping us to navigate the global pandemic, rework PyCon US into a virtual event and hire a new Executive Director. Thank you for supporting the PSF and the Python community through so much change!

Our heartfelt thanks go out to each of you who took the time to review the candidates and submit your votes. Your participation helps the PSF represent our community. We received 621 total votes, which easily reached quorum–1/3 of affirmed voting members (877). We’re especially grateful for your patience with navigating the changes to the voting process, which ultimately allowed for a valid election and a more sustainable elections system.

I also want to thank everyone who helped promote this year’s board election, especially Python Community News who took the initiative to cover this year’s election and produced informational videos from each candidate. I also want to highlight the PSF staff members who made some changes to our membership management on the back-end this year, enabling us to affirm voting intention for the first time ever and setting up OpaVote. Thanks to Ee Durbin and Joe Carey!

Finally, it might feel a little early to mention this, but we will have four seats open again next year. If you're interested in running or learning more, we encourage you to reach out to a current board member or two this year and ask them about serving.

Announcing Our New Security Developer in Residence!

We announced our intention to fill this role back in January, and after a thorough search, we have chosen Seth Michael Larson! He joins the PSF for the next year as our first ever Security Developer-in-Residence. Seth is already well-known to the Python community – he was named a PSF Fellow last year and has already written a lot about Python and security on his blog.

This critical role would not be possible without funding from the OpenSSF Alpha-Omega Project. “At Alpha-Omega, we are excited to support the Python Software Foundation as they improve the security of PyPI, and more generally the Python ecosystem as a whole.” Alpha Omega Representative - Bob Callaway, Google

Seth begins his work with Python and the Python Package Index (PyPI) this week. He says, “The Python community is such a positive part of my life so I'm grateful for this incredible opportunity to contribute back. I'm looking forward to partnering with all of you to build a more secure Python ecosystem for everyone!” We hope that everyone in the community will welcome Seth and help him succeed in his audit and subsequent plans for key security improvements.

This role is funded by a substantial investment from the Open Software Security Foundation (OpenSSF) Alpha-Omega Project. The OpenSSF is a non-profit cross-industry collaboration that brings together leaders to improve the security of open source software by building a broader community, targeted initiatives, and best practices. The OpenSSF unifies many open source security initiatives under one foundation to accelerate work through cross-industry support.

The Python Software Foundation (PSF) is a non-profit whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the Python programming language, and to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers. The PSF supports the Python community using corporate sponsorships, grants, and donations. Are you interested in sponsoring or donating to the PSF so it can continue supporting Python and its community? Check out our sponsorship program, donate directly here, or contact our team!

The 2023 PSF Board Election is Open!

It’s time to cast your vote! Voting takes place from today Tuesday, June 20, through Friday, June 30, 2023 11:59pm UTC. If you are a voting member of the PSF, you should have gotten an email from “OpaVote Voting Link <noreply@opavote.com>” with your ballot, the subject line will read “Python Software Foundation Board of Directors Election 2023”. If you haven’t seen your ballot by Wednesday, please 1) check your spam folder for a message from “noreply@opavote.com” and if you don’t see anything 2) get in touch by emailing psf-elections@python.org so we can make sure we have the most up to date email for you. 

Four seats are open, but you can approve as many candidates as you like. BUT! Choose carefully before you press the big green vote button. Once your vote is cast, it cannot be changed.

We’re overwhelmed by how many of you are willing to contribute to the Python community by serving on the PSF board! Make sure you schedule some time to look at all their statements and choose your candidates carefully. OpaVote doesn’t let you go back and change your vote once you’ve made your choices.

Who can vote? You need to be a Contributing, Managing, Supporting, or Fellow member as of June 15, 2023 and have affirmed your voting intention by June 19, 2023 to vote in this election. Read more about our membership types here or if you have questions about your membership status please email psf-elections@python.org

Board Candidates for 2023 are Announced!

What an exciting list! Please take a look at who is running for the PSF Board this year here. This year there are 4 seats open on the PSF board. You can see who is on the board currently here. (Dustin Ingram, Jeff Triplett, Nina Zakharenko and Thomas Wouters are at the end of their current terms.)

Board Election Timeline:

• Nominations are open, Thursday, June 1st, 2:00 pm UTC
• Board Director Nomination cut-off: Thursday, June 15, 11:59 pm UTC
• Voter application cut-off date: Thursday, June 15, 11:59 pm UTC
• Announce candidates: Friday, June 16th
• Voting start date: Tuesday, June 20, 12:01 am UTC
• Voting end date: Friday, June 30, 11:59 pm UTC

Not sure what UTC is for you locally? Check here! 

Voting takes place from today Tuesday, June 20, through Friday, June 30, 2023 11:59pm UTC. Check here to see how much time you have left to vote. If you are a voting member of the PSF, you will get an email from “OpaVote Voting Link <noreply@opavote.com>” with your ballot, the subject line will read “Python Software Foundation Board of Directors Election 2023”. If you haven’t seen your ballot by Wednesday, please 1) check your spam folder for a message from “noreply@opavote.com” and if you don’t see anything 2) get in touch by emailing psf-elections@python.org so we can make sure we have the most up to date email for you.

If you have questions about your membership status or the election, please email psf-elections@python.org You are welcome to join the discussion about the PSF Board election on Slack or on our forum.

Affirming your PSF Membership voting status

Every PSF Voting Member (Supporting, Managing, Contributing, and Fellow) needs to affirm their membership in order to vote in this year’s election.

This year’s Board Election begins June 20th, and voter eligibility cut-off is June 15th. You should have received an email with instructions and you need to affirm your voting rights before June 15th in order to participate in this year's Board Election. Email will be from "psf@psfmember.org <Python Software Foundation>" with subject "[Action Required] Affirm your PSF Membership voting status"

Why you are being asked to do this:

Section 4.2 of the PSF Bylaws requires that “Members of any membership class with voting rights must affirm each year to the corporation in writing that such member intends to be a voting member for such year.”

The PSF has not enforced this in the past, because it was technically challenging to do so. Now that our voting membership has been completely consolidated into psfmember.org, we are able to do so.

Our motivation is to ensure that our elections can meet quorum as required by Section 3.9 of our bylaws. As our membership has grown we have seen that and increasing number of Contributing, Managing, and Fellow members with indefinite membership do not engage with our annual election, making quorum difficult to reach.

You can see your membership record and status on psfmember.org (note you must be logged in to view that page). If you are a voting-eligible member and do not already have a login there, please sign up and then email psf-donations@python.org so we can link your membership to your account. You can click the emailed link to re-certify without signing in. But please create your account and ensure it is linked to your membership so that we can ensure we have the most up-to-date contact information for you in the future.

What happens next? You’ll get an email from OpaVote with a ballot on or before June 20th and then you can vote!

Learn more about membership here or if you have questions about membership or nominations please email psf-elections@python.org In addition to Slack you are welcome to join the discussion about the PSF Board election on our forum.