Things I've learned serving on the board of the Python Software Foundation

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

PSF Funding, Staffing, and Spending

  • Debate over whether PSF is “woefully underfunded” yet still misallocating what it has.
  • Clarification that board members are unpaid; staff (including some officers and Developers in Residence) are paid.
  • Staff costs around $1.3M in 2023; some argue too little money goes to core development vs. administration and outreach.
  • Others counter that for a language as widely used as Python, PSF’s budget and headcount are modest and necessary to get unglamorous work done.

PyCon US and Outreach vs Core Development

  • PyCon US costs about $1.8M; typically breaks even or profits via tickets and sponsors, but recently ran at a loss due to weaker sponsorship.
  • Some see this scale as standard for North America; others compare it unfavorably to much smaller, underfunded international events and question its relative importance.
  • Broader argument: is Python’s success mainly due to PSF outreach or to language qualities, libraries, and external ecosystems?

PyPI Infrastructure, Bandwidth, and Packaging

  • Fastly’s donated bandwidth for PyPI is seen as crucial; estimated traffic ~600 PB/year.
  • Disagreement over cost estimates (AWS retail vs more realistic hosting or negotiated prices).
  • Suggestions to reduce bandwidth via better compression (LZMA or zstd), leaner wheels, and packaging improvements; others caution against added complexity and volunteer bandwidth.
  • Complaints that packaging and PyPI support are understaffed; some long-standing pip issues and slow support responses cited.

Governance, Work Groups, and Elections

  • Only the board is directly elected; work groups have varied, often non-electoral governance.
  • Concern that influential groups (e.g., Code of Conduct, “User Success”) can be self-appointing and unaccountable.
  • Some view this as normal for nonprofits; others see it as a structural problem if such groups wield real power (e.g., bans).

Code of Conduct and Community Conflict

  • Extensive criticism of the Code of Conduct working group: alleged ideological capture, lack of due process, and use of CoC enforcement to silence critics.
  • Specific controversy around a prominent contributor’s temporary suspension, described by critics as based on vague or defamatory accusations.
  • Calls for independent investigation; discussion of potential legal liability for defamatory statements made in official posts.
  • Others note the “paradox of tolerance” and defend excluding intolerant behavior to protect marginalized participants.

Foundations, Nonprofits, and Comparisons

  • Some say modern open source is too focused on foundations, positions, and politics rather than software, with “inner circles” and gatekeeping.
  • Counterpoint: large projects need formal structures; most nonprofit staff are underpaid relative to industry and essential for operations.
  • Comparisons drawn to other foundations (Linux, Mozilla, Zig) and to 501(c)(3) vs 501(c)(6) models; concerns that legal form doesn’t prevent capture or misuse.

PyPI Content Quality and Curation

  • Complaints that many PyPI packages are low quality, abandoned, or one-off projects; proposals for expiry rules, quality metrics, or endorsements.
  • Others argue that PyPI is intentionally uncurated, similar to npm and other ecosystems; editorial review would require large additional resources and might break users’ dependency stacks.
  • Some note that many “stale” libraries are simply stable and “finished,” so age is not a reliable quality signal.