Nominated by: self after encouragement by Brett and Nick.
I am nominating myself to the Steering Council. I became a core developer in 2014,
and worked on different aspects of the standard library, including unittest and mock. I am also the author of the draft “Local Packages Directory” PEP (PEP 582) along with many other community members.
Background:
I’ve helped out many free and open source software projects as a volunteer for
around 15 years. A major portion of that time I also worked on many free
software projects as my day job. Back in 2004 I started a Linux Users’ Group in
Durgapur, India, and through the same I am organizing an online training to get
more upstream contributors for 11 years. Enabling others to contribute to larger
projects and also see the viewpoints of different groups of users, are the big
motivations for contributing to various projects.
I am also part of the core team of the Tor Project and a long time contributor
to the Fedora Project.
From 2014 (except 2015 when random module decided not to choose me) I have also
served as a Director of the Python Software Foundation, and helped out as a staff
volunteer in PyCon US. I am also the co-chair for the PSF grants working
group. There are various other conferences all across the world where I take
active part. I am up for re-election for the PSF board position this year, and
I am intending to run again for the board.
In 2017 I chaired PyCon Pune, with a special goal to increase contributor base outside of the normal US/EU zone. The dedicated devsprint served that purpose, and slowly more local
Conferences are picking up the trend of focusing on actively participating in the community design & development process, rather than being passive consumers of open source technology. This is a long term process, but, it will help to increase the geographic diversity of our contributor base.
Affiliations
I work as a staff engineer in a non-profit called Freedom of the Press
Foundation, where we work to protect and defend
adversarial journalism in the 21st century. We use crowdfunding, digital
security, and internet advocacy to support journalists and whistleblowers
worldwide.
My main day job is to maintain SecureDrop project.
SecureDrop is an open source whistleblower submission system that media
organizations can install to securely accept documents from anonymous sources.
It is written in Python. My day job allows me to continue contributing to the
various upstream communities. All the work I do is also free and open source
software.
Online Presence
Blog: https://kushaldas.in
Github: https://github.com/kushaldas/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/kushaldas
(I happen to think it’s good, and I would love for you to serve on both!)
. I forget who displaced you that year… I’m sure it was someone very well qualified, as all the PSF Directors have been. But I wish everyone could make the cut in these elections.