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

PSF Board update on improvements to the PSF Grants program

In December 2023 we received an open letter from a coalition of organizers from the pan-African Python community asking the PSF to address concerns and frustrations around our Grants Program. The letter writers agreed to meet with us in December and January to go into more detail and share more context from the pan-African community. Since then, we have been doing a lot of listening and discussing how to better serve the community with the input that was offered.

The PSF Board takes the open letter from the pan-African delegation seriously, and we began to draft a plan to address everything in the letter. We also set up improved two-way communications so that we can continue the conversation with the community. The writers of the open letter have now met several times with members of the PSF board. We are thankful for their insight and guidance on how we can work together and be thoroughly and consistently supportive of the pan-African Python community.

We care a lot about building consensus and ensuring that we are promising solutions that have support and a realistic workflow. Building an achievable plan that meets the needs of the community has involved work for the PSF’s small staff. It also included additional conversations with and input from the volunteers who serve on the Board and in our working groups, especially the Grants Working Group. We are grateful for the input as well as the opportunity to improve.

Plans and progress on the Grants Program

Here is what’s already been done:

• Set up Grants Program Office Hours to open up a line of casual sustained communication between the community and our staff members who support the grants program. Several sessions have already taken place.
• The PSF contracted Carol Willing to do a retrospective on the DjangoCon Africa review and approval and make suggestions for improvements or changes. We published her report in March.
• We published a transparency report for our grants numbers from the last two years, and plan to publish a report on our grants work for every year going forward so we can continue to work in the open on continually improving the grants program.  
• In May, the board voted that we will not override or impose any country-specific human rights regulation for Python communities when deciding whether or not to fund community-run Python or Python-related events. The Grants Program will use the same criteria for all grant requests, no matter their country of origin. This does not affect our criteria for choosing a specific US state for PyCon US and it does not change our ability to fund events in countries that are sanctioned by the US government (where the PSF is based.) Finally, the Grants Working Group will still require a robust and enforceable code of conduct and we expect local organizers to choose what is appropriate for their local community when drafting their code of conduct.

What is on our roadmap:

• With community input, we’ll be overhauling the grant application process and requirements for applications. Our goal is to make the process inclusive and the administrative requirements as lightweight as possible, while not creating additional legal or administrative work.
• We’re conducting a thorough examination of our grant priorities by subject matter and location. We hope to make requesting and reviewing grants for activities beyond events easier.
• Continuing to reimagine the PSF Board’s responsibility within the community. Please read on for our thought process and work in this area.

Reevaluating PSF Board member communications and conduct norms and standards

We discussed Board member conduct and communications norms – both past and future – at our retreat in January. We realize that some things were said by past and current Board members that did not reflect the PSF’s outlook or values. We are working to ensure current and future Board members understand the power their communications have on our community. Understanding the expectations and responsibilities that come with service on the PSF Board is part of orientation for service. Going forward we plan to invest more time into this topic during our PSF Board orientations.

The Board has agreed to hold each other accountable and use the position of PSF Board member responsibly in communications with the community. We acknowledge that PSF Board members have not always recognized the impact that their comments have had on community members, either in private or in public. Going forward, community members can report board and board-delegated working group members’ conduct to individuals who do not serve on the board. Two members of the PSF’s Code of Conduct Working Group (Jeff Triplett (jeff.triplett@pyfound.org) and Tereza Iofciu (email is coming)) have volunteered to receive these reports and handle them separately. At a time that Jeff or Tereza are unable to receive these reports, other non-board members of the Code of Conduct working group will be nominated to manage such reports.

Moving forward together

Moving forward, the PSF Board and Staff will continue to prioritize transparency through the form of the Grants Office Hours and yearly reports. Our focus will move from response to charter, process, and documentation improvements based on the findings we have made. The PSF Board will continue to conduct annual orientations and ad hoc check-ins on our communication and conduct standards. We welcome you to send your questions, comments, and suggestions for the Grants Program to grants@pyfound.org.

As the great Maya Angelou has said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.” We want to thank the pan-African community for showing us that we can do better and we look forward to being a community partner that can be counted on to hear criticism and continually make changes that improve our service to the Python community.

Announcing the 2024 PSF Board Election & Proposed Bylaw Change Results!

The 2024 election for the PSF Board and proposed Bylaws changes created an opportunity for conversations about the PSF's work to serve the global Python community. We appreciate community members' perspectives, passion, and engagement in the election process this year.

We want to send a big thanks to 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 improve the PSF and represent the parts of the community you participate in. We hope that you will continue to think about these issues, share your ideas, and join a PSF Work Group if you feel called to do so.

Board Members Elect

Congratulations to our three new Board members who have been elected!

• Tania Allard
• KwonHan Bae
• Cristián Maureira-Fredes

We’ll be in touch with all the elected candidates shortly to schedule onboarding. Newly elected PSF Board members are provided orientation for their service and will be joining the upcoming board meeting.

PSF Bylaw Changes

All three of the proposed PSF Bylaw changes are approved:

• Merging Contributing and Managing member classes
• Simplifying the voter affirmation process by treating past voting activity as intent to continue voting
• Allow for removal of Fellows by a Board vote in response to Code of Conduct violations, removing the need for a vote of the membership

We appreciate the high level of engagement on the proposed Bylaw changes, and the range of perspectives and points that were raised. We hope that our efforts towards increased transparency, such as the Office Hour session, and our responses in the FAQ helped to continue to build trust with the community. Our goal with these changes continues to be:

• Making it simpler to qualify as a Member for Python-related volunteer work
• Making it easier to vote
• Allowing the Board more options to keep our membership safe and enforce the Code of Conduct

This announcement serves as notice that the Bylaws changes have been approved by the membership, and will automatically go into effect 15 days from now, on Thursday, August 1st, 2024.

Thank you!

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank our outgoing board member, Débora Azevedo, for her outstanding service. Débora served on the PSF Board through a particularly eventful time; bringing PyCon US into an age of hybrid events, responding to calls from our community for transparency, and hiring multiple new staff members to continue to improve our organization. Thank you for supporting the PSF and the Python community through so much change- you are appreciated!

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 611 total votes, easily reaching quorum–1/3 of affirmed voting members (794). We’re especially grateful for your patience with continuing to navigate the changes to the voting process, which allows for a valid election and a more sustainable election system.

We also want to thank everyone who helped promote this year’s board election, especially Board Members Denny Perez and Georgi Ker, who took the initiative to cover this year’s election and produced informational videos for our candidates. This promotional effort was inspired by the work of Python Community News last year. We also want to highlight the PSF staff members and PSF Board members who put in tons of effort each year as we work to continually improve the PSF elections.

What’s next?

If you’re interested in the complete tally, make sure to check the Python Software Foundation Board of Directors Election 2024 Results page. These results will be available until 10 Sep 2024 at 10:00 AM EDT.

The PSF Election team will conduct a retrospective of this year’s election process to ensure we are improving year over year. We received valuable feedback about the process and tooling. We hope to be able to implement changes for next year to ensure a smooth and accessible election process for everyone in our community.

Finally, it might feel a little early to mention this, but we will have at least 4 seats open again next year. If you're interested in running or learning more, we encourage you to contact a current PSF Board member or two this year and ask them about their experience serving on the board.

Announcing Our New PyPI Support Specialist!

We are thrilled to announce that our first-ever search for a dedicated PyPI Support Specialist has concluded with the hire of Maria Ashna, the newest member of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) staff. Reporting to Ee Durbin, Director of Infrastructure, Maria joins us from a background in academic research, technical consulting, and theatre.

Maria will help the PSF to support one of our most critical services, the Python Package Index (PyPI). Over the past 23 years, PyPI has seen essentially exponential growth in traffic and users, relying for the most part on volunteers to support it. With the addition of requirements to keep all Python maintainers and users safe, our support load has outstretched our support resources for some time now. The Python Software Foundation committed to hiring to increase this capacity in April and we’re excited to have Maria on board to begin providing crucially needed support.

From Maria, “I am a firm believer in democratizing tech. The Open Source community is the lifeblood of such democratization, which is why I am excited to be part of PSF and to serve this community.”

As you see Maria around the PyPI support inbox, issue tracker, and discuss.python.org in the future we hope that you’ll extend a warm welcome! We’re eager to get her up and running to reduce the stress that users have been experiencing around PyPI support and further our work to improve and extend PyPI sustainably.

Announcing Our New Infrastructure Engineer

We are excited to announce that Jacob Coffee has joined the Python Software Foundation staff as an Infrastructure Engineer bringing his experience as an Open Source maintainer, dedicated homelab maintainer, and professional systems administrator to the team. Jacob will be the second member of our Infrastructure staff, reporting to Director of Infrastructure, Ee Durbin.

Joining our team, Jacob will share the responsibility of maintaining the PSF systems and services that serve the Python community, CPython development, and our internal operations. This will add crucially needed redundancy to the team as well as capacity to undertake new initiatives with our infrastructure.

Jacob shares, “I’m living the dream by supporting the PSF mission AND working in open source! I’m thrilled to be a part of the PSF team and deepen my contributions to the Python community.”

In just the first few days, Jacob has already shown initiative on multiple projects and issues throughout the infrastructure and we’re excited to see the impact he’ll have on the PSF and broader Python community. We hope that you’ll wish him a warm welcome as you see him across the repos, issue trackers, mailing lists, and discussion forums!

The 2024 PSF Board Election is Open!

It’s time to cast your vote! Voting is open starting today Tuesday, July 2nd, through Tuesday, July 16th, 2024 2:00 pm UTC. Check the Elections page to see how much time you have left to vote.

How to Vote

If you are a voting member of the PSF that affirmed your intention to participate in this year’s election, you will receive an email from “OpaVote Voting Link <noreply@opavote.com>” with a link to your ballot. The subject line will read “Python Software Foundation Board of Directors Election 2024”. If you haven’t seen your ballot by Wednesday, please check your spam folder for a message from “noreply@opavote.com”. If you don’t see anything get in touch by emailing psf-elections@python.org so we can look into your account and make sure we have the most up-to-date email for you.

Three seats on the board are open, but you can approve as many of the 19 candidates as you like. We’re delighted by how many of you are willing to contribute to the Python community by serving on the PSF Board! Make sure you take some time to look at all the nominee statements and choose your candidates carefully. ATTN: Choose carefully before you press the big green vote button. Once your vote is cast, it cannot be changed.

Who can vote?

You need to be a Contributing, Managing, Supporting, or Fellow member and have affirmed your voting intention by June 25th, 2024, to vote in this election. If you’d like to learn more or sign up as a PSF Member, check out our membership types. You can check your membership status on your User Information page on psfmember.org (you will need to be logged in). If you have questions about your membership or the election please email psf-elections@python.org