Now that PEP 609 has been accepted (and is in the process of being implemented) I’d like to propose that the PyPA also become a fiscal sponsoree of the PSF.
This would mainly allow the PyPA to be an organization that can take community contributions (e.g. from GitHub Sponsors or Tidelift). Examples of this in action include the Pallets Project and many other groups mostly focused on conferences: https://www.python.org/psf/fiscal-sponsorees/
Any thoughts or concerns?
How would this interact with Packaging-WG?
IIRC, there was a proposal earlier to “basically” add a “Sponsor” button to all of PyPA’s repositories, pointing to the PackagingWG’s fundraising page. This proposal was blocked on us creating the pypa/.github repository and making sure we have concensus on this. That repository is created now and we have a formal way to confirm that concensus w/ PEP 609’s committer votes.
What exactly would this mean? People would be able to contribute financially towards PyPA? Assuming that’s the primary implication, then don’t we have at least some responsibility to have a general idea of what we’d do with that money? (And document that intention, so people can decide whether their money is being used in a way that they are happy with).
I feel like this is mostly a question of formalities… effectively the PyPA already acts like a project of the PSF, via the Packaging-WG, and I don’t think this would change much in practice. But if formalizing this as a “fiscal sponsorship” relationship makes the paperwork easier for the PSF or something then cool.
Precisely this. This would allow the PyPA to become an organization that can take funds, which would be held by the PSF, and earmarked to be distributed/disbursed by the Packaging-WG, whose primary responsibility is “to support the larger efforts of improving and maintaining the packaging ecosystem in Python through fundraising and disbursement of raised funds”.
Ah, okie. I was mostly just curious about the intended end goal here. Looks to me that this is “just” formalizing status quo, so consider me 100% on board. 
OK, cool. That sounds fine to me. (My main worry was that donations could somehow be tied to specific work directly, which feels too much like “pay for a feature” for me to be comfortable with).
So +1 from me.
In PEP 609 terms, we’d mostly be changing the bit in https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0609/#terminology that disclaims any formal link between PyPA and the Packaging WG. Instead, that section would say something like what Dustin wrote above:
“PyPA is a fiscal sponsoree of the PSF, and relies on the PSF’s Packaging WG to manage funds contributed to support development of PyPA projects. Community members may financially contribute to development of PyPA projects by contributing funds to the PSF that are earmarked to be distributed/disbursed by the Packaging WG.”
(Note: I think it might be possible to earmark specifically for “PyPA” once we’re a sponsoree, so we’d run any wording we chose past the PSF staff to be sure it’s accurate)
This is already true today, but previously it was entirely informal based on the individuals in the Packaging WG, as there wasn’t any governance structure on the PyPA side that could agree to becoming a fiscal sponsoree.
It’s been a week without additional discussion. Unless anyone objects in the next ~24 hours, I’ll bring this to a vote per PEP 609.
Last I checked, we still had to sync-up the pypa-commiters mailing list members list w/ folks-who-actually-have-the-commit-bit. IMO we should do that before we do any votes.
The pypa-committers proposal has passed. I’ll be following up with the necessary folks at the PSF. Thanks all!
If anyone would like to join a call with the PSF Executive Director and Financial Controller about this, please fill out this doodle: https://doodle.com/poll/pazegnspdxqnveim