PPC Nomination AMA for Paul Moore

Packaging PPC nominations
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Brett started this, but it’s a great idea, so here’s a thread for anyone who wants to ask me about my background, experience, or my nomination for the PPC.

I’m happy to answer anything - to get the best council we can, it’s important that people know the candidates that they are deciding whether to vote for, so if it matters to you, feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to answer!

Edit: I should have added a link to my nomination statement, sorry! Nominee for 2026 Python Packaging Council Election | Python.org

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Because I think you have the most unique perspective on this coming to the PPC as a PEP delegate around packaging PEPs. What are ways that you think the PPC should help to make the packaging PEP process more efficient and invite more of the community and maintainers of packaging tools to contribute ideas through PEPs?

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That’s a great question, and one I’ve been thinking a lot about recently, based on the way the wheel variants discussion has been progressing.

First of all, I think we need to make a lot more effort to find out what new and potential contributors see as the problems. As with any established group, we’re often blind to our own flaws, and we need to actively seek out information on how to improve. This is something that I think the council needs to do on a number of fronts - the PEP process, understanding what users want from packaging, working with other communities - and I intend to work on finding ways to get better information in all of those areas.

Having said that, there are a number of very clear problems with our current processes.

The PEP process is not designed around maintaining “living documents” like standards. This shows in the way that our processes for changing standards is ill-defined and clumsy to work with. It also means that we have a fear of getting things wrong (because it’s too hard to correct mistakes) which creates a very high bar for people trying to contribute, and an often hostile reaction to proposals, as people focus on the ways things might go wrong. I’d push for the council to do a review of the standards process, with the intention of replacing the PEP process with something specifically designed around the needs of packaging.

The hostile reception I mentioned above is another very common complaint. Proposals on Discourse are often met with negative feedback - to the extent that proposals like wheel-next and the variant proposal feel it’s necessary to do their design away from dpo just to work in a more supportive environment. We all lose by this - the community doesn’t get early sight and input into new proposals, and the authors do a load of work with no community feedback until later in the process, when they have already invested a lot of time into their design decisions.

I’d like to see a number of changes to improve this situation. The packaging council needs to work with the dpo moderators and community to ensure that the Discourse environment is welcoming and supportive for new contributors. We may need to restructure the Packaging category to encourage better interactions and clearer expectations. In addition, each proposal should have someone explicitly responsible for managing discussions, shutting down over-negative contributions, keeping the discussions on topic, and ensuring feedback is captured and addressed.

I don’t think we can completely eliminate negative feedback - a proposal needs to be subject to scrutiny if we’re to get the best possible result - but I think we can do better at setting expectations, and at keeping the tone of feedback positive and supportive.

I could say more (people used to my communications will confirm that I usually do!!!) but I hope this gives a good idea of my plans.

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I hope it’s OK for me to comment on these as well :slightly_smiling_face:

I think the PSF, and the PyPI admins, are key parties in the packaging ecosystem. I’m not aware of any particular issues with the way they work presently (apart from the problem we all face of limited volunteer resource!) so I don’t think the PPC needs to change anything there - we’ll have plenty of more pressing concerns to deal with initially.

I would expect the PPC to meet regularly with both the PSF and the PyPI admins, though, in much the same way as the Python SC meets regularly with the PSF.

I think we need to consider the various aspects here individually. To a large extent I expect the role of being the “official face of packaging” to be naturally absorbed by the council. And I’d hope that fiscal sponsorship would be better handled by the council, and would be formally transferred to them. Which really only leaves the PyPA as a github organisation and a loose collection of projects. I’m happy to leave the decision of whether to retain that structure to the individual projects at that point.

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Haha yes, I just asked William and Brett (i dont think i meant to actually hit reply for Bernat’s yet but i see this morning I did :P) to see if anyone thought they were dumb questions before asking the rest of the candidates (to save myself potential embarrassment :rofl:)

i appreciate your answers!

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Thank you for such a well thought out response Paul!

I also have been thinking a lot about this having been involved in the discussions for wheel variants along with you and with my involvement now with PEP 694. So I appreciate the views you provided!

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Thank you for continuing to step up to serve on the PPC! Your role as PEP delegate gives you an unique position. Perhaps a disadvantage, since many have strong opinions, maybe even old grudges and are keen to change things significantly. How much weekly time did you spend so far on in-depth review of proposed PEPs that didn’t touch your preferred interests? Do you expect the other candidates will share this load equally?

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Thanks for the question.

In the past, I have reviewed every PEP that was submitted, regardless of whether it was an area that I had a personal interest in. Obviously, when a PEP covered areas where I was less familiar with the subject matter, I had to rely on experts for in-depth views, but as a general rule I consider it the responsibility of the PEP author to make their proposal accessible to non-experts as well as experts[1], so I don’t see my lack of expertise in a certain subject area as a critical issue. I’m perfectly comfortable asking dumb questions when I need to :slightly_smiling_face: In the rare cases where expertise was important I would always consider the option of asking someone more qualified if they were willing to be PEP delegate for that particular proposal.

With the new Packaging Council, I expect things to work fairly similarly, with the major advantage that having 5 council members means there will be a much broader range of expertise to draw on.

I don’t feel that my history is a particular disadvantage - certainly there have been heated debates, and even some fundamental disagreements, in the past, but it’s important to remember that everyone has a shared goal to make Python’s packaging ecosystem better, and with that basis, we can (and will!) continue to work together effectively. I’m hoping there are no outstanding grudges[2]!

As far as time spent is concerned, I generally found that reviewing PEPs was a relatively manageable commitment of time. Obviously, more complex PEPs like wheel variants or lockfiles took more work, but even those weren’t a problem in practice. It’s hard to put a precise figure on it, as the number of active PEPs varies significantly over time. But I don’t expect PEP review/approval work to be a bottleneck for the new council.

What took (and will continue to take, regardless of whether I am on the new council) a much more significant amount of my time was participating in PEP discussions, both as a pip maintainer and as the PEP delegate. I strongly believe that the council should be closely involved in the development of PEPs, from the initial stages through to the point where a formal pronouncement is requested. Not everyone who proposes a standard is familiar with the process, or even necessarily with the broader packaging community and ecosystem(s), and we should be helping and encouraging all PEP authors with their proposal. The last thing we want is for the PEP process to be a barrier for interested newcomers to share their ideas.

I don’t know that it would be reasonable to make such participation a formal part of the council’s responsibility - it’s a lot of work, and not everyone has the free time to commit to it[3]. But I do think that it should be a priority of the council to make sure that they are present and active in all PEP discussions. I’d like to see all of the council participate in that process, and I’d certainly encourage my fellow council members to do so - as well as being important for the community, it’s a hugely rewarding thing to do. But whether that load will be shared equally, or handled by individual members who want to focus on that area, will be something for each council to agree between themselves.

I hope this answers your question - please follow up if you need anything more.

  1. And I’d always work with authors to help them ensure that this is the case - see below for more on this point. ↩︎

  2. Seriously - if anyone does have an issue with any of the calls I’ve made as PEP delegate, feel free to contact me, as I’d love to try to come to a better understanding. ↩︎

  3. I’m fortunate in that I do have that time - I’m retired and so I don’t have a “day job” taking up my time ↩︎

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I am not 100% sure that you imply this already, but I really would like to see a lot more active involvement (from PPC and/or/with DPO moderators) to keep packaging PEP discussions tidy and manageable for everyone (readers, participants, PEP authors, and ultimately the PPC as decision makers). I used to follow packaging PEP discussions quite closely (and sometimes participate) but I mostly gave up because the pace is too high and the threads feel disorderly. Maybe with 5 members in the PPC this will be possible to keep those discussions more under control. That is definitely something I would like to see improve.

I understand that this is not an issue that is specific to the packaging PEPs, though.

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I agree 100%, and it’s something I would like to work on with the Council. Whether the right way to do this would be for council members to act as moderators, or for the PEP sponsor to handle that role, or something else, I’m not sure of.

As PEP delegate, it’s not something I did because I felt it was outside my authority. By having the explicit remit to define the scope of their role, the Council has the opportunity to take a different approach.

It’s not only beneficial for participants if discussions are kept focused, either. I’ve heard feedback from PEP authors that they are significantly discouraged from contributing by the sprawling, and often confrontational, nature of discussions. We need to fix this - it’s of vital importance for the health and growth of the community. I don’t have any easy answers, but I want to give the topic priority.

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