In case there is concern about the potential for outside income to create conflicts of interest, this page may be relevant: PSF Conflict of Interest Policy.
If by âmembersâ you mean âcore devsâ, we have protections in place for that. The SC canât have more than 2 members from the same company (and that includes subsidiaries, so LinkedIn is considered part of Microsoft), so you canât really take that over. Itâs way too hard to become a core dev to gain majority voting (plus too expensive to employ that many of us, e.g. MS has 8 core devs on staff and thatâs a massive amount of core devs for a single company to employ which doesnât break double digits, although maybe Google in its heyday of core dev employment had more?). And if anyone was trying to be nefarious they would need to get it passed all the core devs and not have it reach the SC somehow. Plus we have version control to undo stuff for a reason.
If by âmembersâ you mean âPSF membersâ, once again buying your way to majority voting is expensive. Plus the PSF board has staggered elections, so it would take years of controlling the votes to gain control.
But I think the most important point here is there isnât enough money in programming languages for anyone to care about control. Sure, there are consultancies and book authors and various other people who benefit from Python succeeding, but whatâs the worry that causes people to think about some nefarious company taking over the language? Everyone uses Python so no one benefits from ruining it. Itâs open source so no one can change the license to block competitors from using it (and honestly, all the big tech companies have internal forks of Python with their own tweaks, so they sort of do it already and no one cares). And no oneâs bottom line is going to increase if Python goes away due to it competing with some profit driver. Iâve never heard an e.g. Java developer or company say, âwe could make so much more money if Python just didnât existâ. Heck, if there was money in programming languages there would have been more attempts at them during the various dot com bubbles, and yet there werenât really any.
So my question to those wanting to have all this info is what is the scenario you are concerned about? One of the posts that triggered this was about a company âowningâ Python. OK, and do what with it thatâs so evil/bad/negative? And if it was already âownedâ, whatâs happened that has caused you problems (other than Python getting faster somehow ruining your workflow)? And I am seriously asking because Python has been historically underfunded and is definitely not funded well relative to the amount of money it generates companies. And yet people questioning a companyâs motives for helping out is not probably going to inspire anyone to donate (more) if its leads to questions of motive (and yes, that can be enough to make someone not sponsor something).
This is questionable. What if someone doesnât want to let know to the world when he works? When start privacy and ends transparency? Personally I donât make public when I work and I prefer to continue to do that.
Iâm not asking for you to disclose that. Iâm pointing out that looking at the finances of the PSF alone gives a very partial picture of the situation, if one wants to learn if one or few companies are indeed controlling the PSF as it has been alleged.
As a reminder, the purpose of this discussion is to facilitate a general understanding of how the PSF is governed and funded. Certainly a consideration of the policies and mechanisms for avoiding conflicts of interest would fall within that scope. Thus far, this entire discussion has proceeded accordingly. However, discussion in support of a hypothesis that any specific individual, organization, or company may have violated such policies would fall outside the prescribed topic, and therefore should not occur here.
What about funding from book sales related to Python and programming?
AFAIK the PSF does not publish any books. Any proceeds from books about Python would go to their publishers and authors
That is correct, the PSF doesnât publish any books, and we donât receive royalties or anything from Python-related books.