I have been using “Association” in conversations, podcasts, etc, and people have not even noticed the switch, so I think that should be the term we switch to.
4 Likes
Middle ground: PyPaT, Python Packaging Team 
It doesn’t preserve backward compat of the acronym, so I’m not sure its really practically any better than the original. IMO, I have no say in the decision, but from a practical perspective of both minimizing misunderstanding of what the PyPA is while also minimizing the churn and effort to change the name, “Association” seems to stand out as a clear best choice in that respect.
It seems like there may be consensus on ‘Association’? Is anyone strongly opposed?
3 Likes
There’s no requirement that the acronym changes, whether you adopt “Team” or something else. You could always have a little explanation in the readme or docs:
We consider ourselves a “Team”, not an “Authority”. For historical reasons, our name is “PyPA”, but it stands for “Python Packaging Team”.
That said, “Association” seems like a good choice as well, it removes much of the weight of “Authority”, although I think it’s less neutral than “Team”.
2 Likes
It seems like arguments are being made out of convenience or to avoid churn, rather than trying to seek for a good name, or consistency with the rest of the Teams as @pradyunsg was advocating.
However, maybe churn is good? Not in the sense of having to change URLs here and there (that’s thankless work) but in the sense of “we drop the Authority name that has produced so much grief and confusion”. That way, you also avoid conversations like these:
A: This project/Myself belongs to PyPA
B: Ah, the Python Packaging Authority?
A: …well, it’s “Association” now
B: Oh, I see, so it’s registered as a non-profit then?
A: …not really, it’s an association of people but it’s not formal
B: …ok
To the PyPA members here, from an outsiders perspective there appears to be fairly good agreement around “Association”. Maybe it is time to call a PyPA Committers vote, per the procedure in PEP 609?
It would seem to me from a nominal “outsider’s” perspective (at least wrt the PyPA) that the remaining potential blockers to dropping said Authority name are reaching consensus on “Association” as the proposed replacement, which otherwise seems quite strong, and the amount of mechanical busywork and breakage needed to execute the change.
From what I can tell, outside of the above, there appears to fairly wide acceptance of “Association” as an alternative, and from firsthand exposure to many of the places, there would be orders of magnitude more things that would need to change if the word started with a different letter, which is particularly critical given how volunteer-bandwidth-limited packaging is. Therefor, if the primary objective is dropping the “Authority” name, then moving to “Association” is the quickest, most sure and efficient way of doing that.
At least from my perspective as a technical writer, documentarian and PEP editor, even absent the starting letter “Association” appears to be the most appropriate overall choice. “Team” implies a more cohesive, tightly knit and relatively monolithic working closely together on a single overall project, as opposed to the reality of PyPA being a loose collective of many distinct teams of maintainers working on their own projects, under the umbrella of an overall free association. Furthermore,“Python Packaging Team” implies a much closer formal relationship to core Python than actually exists, when it is really more its own independent association.
At least in (US) English usage that I’m familiar with, “Association” in this context does imply a non-profit or a highly formalized ground, as opposed to a relatively loose collective of people/groups with a common overarching goal (but possibly different individual objectives and motivations) that people can relatively freely join or leave,
FWIW, I’m opposed to the “Association” name change. It’s churn, has sufficient scope for confusion and isn’t a significantly-better representation either.
Besides, we now do have “authority” over packaging and I think we as a group need to explicitly acknowledge that. The Python SC delegates responsibility to the PyPA, for all packaging-related matters. We set the intereoperability standards for Python pakaging. We are (definitionally) maintainers of the packaging tooling in the ecosystem. I’m not sure what that is, if it’s not some level of “authority” over the way Python Packaging behaves and evolves.
Would a more neutral name (eg: Team) be better? Yes. Would it (or something else) make sense on it’s own, justifying the amount of churn? No. Would it be better if it were consistent with the broader Python dev ecosystem? Yes. Is there interest in that level of ecosystem churn? No. 
[1]
I disagree.
They both use the same processes, they both derive “power” from the same group via the same mechanism (the SC, via PEP delegation), they both use the same broader governance structures (PSF for grants, funding etc), there’s multiple folks who have the both “labels” corresponding to the groups, etc.
Even so… IMO having a name that lowers barriers and puts the two groups on level footing is a good thing – it’s preferable to collaborate more closely on the areas where there’s an intersection (eg: support for new platforms, the redistributability of the standard library, etc) rather than not do that.
PS: I don’t have the mental bandwidth for an extended discussion on this though, so I’m gonna cop out of this discussion after this post.
I still think it’s a good idea but it’s evident that not everyone feels it’d be worthwhile. ↩︎
6 Likes
To be blunt, I don’t think there’s enough motivation from PyPA members to actually bother making the change. I know I won’t be interested in doing any of the work involved. I’m -1 on starting a vote when we have no plan for actually doing the work that success would imply. If a vote were called right now, I’d probably just abstain.
1 Like