How do people feel about a "Python Packaging Authority (PyPA)" -> "Python Packaging team" renaming?

This is coming from Adopting the concept of "Teams" (from PEP 8015) – which proposed that Python move away from having groups with names like “XYZ Authority” / “XYZ-SIG” / “XYZ community” to a single naming style – “XYZ team” – where each team is SC-ratified.

If the PyPA does not/can not make such a transition, then I don’t think the overall proposal would be particularly useful. So… How do people feel about such a renaming?

I can come up with three concerns:

I think the second and third are both tractable, and the main concern I have with the renaming is how we’d handle the GitHub organisation’s name honestly. The rest seems like a bunch of find-replace routines, which shouldn’t be that bad. :slight_smile:

x-ref Retiring distutils-sig@python.org? (was renaming distutils-sig@python.org to packaging-sig@python.org)
x-ref Remove the "Authority" from Packaging

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Would “group” be better than “team”? Unless you’re also proposing much more control over the direction of packaging (which I believe is what was intended by PEP 8015) rather than the loose coalition as it currently exists.

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Seems fine to me, even if there’s a bit of legacy in the meantime. ObRef to Warsaw’s Fifth Law.

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I’m fine with PyPA following such a change, assuming that the change is approved in the broader context. I’ve no particular love for the term “Packaging team”[1] but I’m not sufficiently bothered to debate it. Let the people interested enough to support the proposal for having all the different “teams” unified under a single process decide what to call those teams[2].

Equally, I think the work involved in the renamings (not just for PyPA, but for all the teams) should be a factor in deciding whether the overall “teams” concept makes sense. But if the consensus is that it does, then presumably the interested parties will commit the resources to make it happen.

I have a lot of muscle memory invested in typing “pypa/pip”, so I won’t enjoy the transition, but I won’t block it…


  1. In spite of its faults, I quite like the term “PyPA”… ↩︎

  2. What about “Python Documentation Authority”, “Python Async Authority”, “Python Typing Authority”, etc.? :slightly_smiling_face: ↩︎

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I’d be happy with this rename.

“Python Packaging Association (PyPA)”? :smiley: I’m in favour of preserving muscle memory as well.

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IMO PEP 609 has the formal governance model and the SC standing delegations are as much control as we’d “need” to be honest.

I’m not proposing any new developments in terms of control or whatnot.

Why do you not like Team, Steve? :stuck_out_tongue:

More seriously, I don’t think either of those translate too well to me the groups/teams/SIGs/examples-from-8015 (ok… maybe, group could, definitely not association).

That said, this feels like more of a bikeshed-color detail than a functional one so I’d like to avoid going into an extended discussion into this. I’m sure we can come up with a lot of names, if we want to.

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“Team” for me carries a really strong implication of “people working together on a single project” and a fairly strong suggestion that somebody is in charge/responsible/answerable. None of that is true for PyPA today, and I don’t think anyone wants it to be.

As annoying as it is when people bring their baggage over “Authority”, swapping it for the baggage around “Team” might be worse.

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Other options for keeping the acronym: Alliance, Affiliation, Army (tongue in cheek).

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It reminds me of the early days where we had to create only the most innocuous sounding “Python Software Association”.

What about “Python Packaging Friends” :rofl:

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Just to remind people, this post was originally triggered by the proposal that Python in general adopted the idea of teams.

I see no significant value to renaming the PyPA, if we’re not going to align with a broader structure. So if people don’t like the name “team”, I suggest that should be debated on the original thread.

The one exception is, if we want to try to get rid of the implications involved in the term “Authority”, then changing to another word that starts with “A” would be OK with me, as it doesn’t require a major renaming to change the term “PyPA”.

But I’m a strong -1 on any renaming that doesn’t either leave the acronym PyPA intact, or align us with all of the other various Python groups (typing, async, documentation, …)

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To me (as a non-native English speaker), “Team” means “Group working towards a common purpose or goal”. Merriam-Webster says “a number of persons associated together in work or activity”. +1 for “Team”!

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The acronym would be unfortunate/collide-y.

That being said, PYPA and PYPI are not the best acronyms either.

For all the cheesiness, wheels and cheese shop were memorable, easy to talk about (verbally) and most importantly googled easily.

I think that the main use case for an acronym is web search like “npm sockets”.

I still lament when we “went professional” and stopped using The Cheeseshop name. C’mon, it’s the perfect Monty Python joke!

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I definitely like my packages a bit runny.

So… the thing I wanted to check was whether people feel strongly about preserving the PyPA name/acronym, to prioritize that over consistency with a broader effort to align names. The answer seems to be: No one seems to be opposed to a renaming that aligns with the broader group as proposed.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, there are lots of opinions on what the new name should be. As noted: put that in the original topic please. :slight_smile:

FWIW, same. :slight_smile:

I’ll flag that PyPy is a thing too, just to add to the confusion a newcomer may have.

I would feel like this whole effort has failed if people are inclined to use acronyms after the renaming. The whole motivation here is to make things less obscure and to eliminate acronyms in the first place!

I consider that fact that “Python Packaging Team” does not squash into an acronym to be a feature, not a bug.

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I think we’ll need a replacement for things like the github organisation name “pypa”, and I’d want that to be short, so an acronym is ideal there.

What would you be proposing to rename the organisation as, if we did become the “Python packaging Team”?

I’m pretty sure a lot of people are going to shorten it to an
acronym anyway, regardless of whether it’s pronounceable. To take
related teams in Debian for example: historically, Python modules
were packaged by the Debian Python Modules Team and Python
applications by the Python Applications Packaging Team, who recently
joined forces to become the Debian Python Team. However, people
referred to the old groups as the DPMT and PAPT, and to the new
combined group as the DPT (which lends further confusion with the
existence of the popular Debian Package Tracker site). Even the
announcement used acronyms…

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2020/09/msg00002.html

I’m fine with a renaming - “team” is fine with me but “association” or some similar word that preserves the “a” part of the “PyPA” for backwards compatibility is also fine with me!