For your consideration: Proposed bylaws changes to improve our membership experience

Correcting the record: my memory of this was faulty. The vote was closer than I recalled. The public record of Board votes shows instead that it passed by one vote:

“”"
RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation request the PyPI administrators to remove the package “XXXX” (https://pypi.python.org/pypi/XXXX)
Approved 6-4-1 by IRC vote, 31 January, 2014.
“”"

where I replaced the “offensive word” in question twice with “XXXX”. It’s in the public record quoted if you care.

For context, there wasn’t a passionate debate on any side, and attempts to contact the package’s author went unanswered. “XXXX” had even worked its way into the names of API functions, so it would have required major work to purge it from the project - which was very niche and had no downloads anyway. It was domain-specific wordplay. For good or ill, it was hard to care much either way.

EDIT: boy, my memory is apparently shot :frowning_face: . There was no passion in the Board meeting at which the vote was taken, but I had forgotten we actually debated it in email before, over about 3 months(!). That had some passion. Not really over the package in question, but over the general question of just how low a bar it should take to purge a package from PyPI. The name of the package here - XXXX - was a one-letter play on the name of an established package - YXXX - and it was a significant piece of work. This wasn’t some troll project seeking to offend, or to test some limit, it was serious (albeit very niche) work that indulged in some unfortunate wordplay.

No consensus was reached on that. or - worse - even on the principles that might inform such a consensus. The answer we were left with was “whatever it takes to get 6 votes from the Board today”.

That’s how these things go. Messy.

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