Hi all - I wanted to be sure folks here got to see this blog post announcing a very tough decision we made, which has been getting more attention than we expected around the web. We’re very grateful for the community’s support, which has been pouring in and has honestly been a little overwhelming.
Tagging in @sethmlarson who was PI (Primary Investigator) on the proposal and did the heavy lifting on the writing and project design, and who would have led the proposed work.
The PSF applied for a $1.5M grant from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to make innovative improvements to packaging security—and we were recommended for funding! But as a condition of funding, we were asked to affirm that we wouldn’t undertake any diversity, equity, and inclusion work, whether or not we used the government funds to do so. The PSF simply couldn’t agree to that statement, as facilitating “the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers” is written directly into our mission and core to our values, so we withdrew our application. In the end, it wasn’t a hard decision for the PSF to put our community and our values first, but it does mean we lost out on this large funding source. Donations and sponsorships will help us fill the gap, so we can continue supporting the Python ecosystem and living our values. Please read our statement, share it with your networks, and support us if you can.
I think there needs to be an open source software research foundation whose sole purpose is to conduct software improvement research. It could seek and accept funding from sources, including but not limited to the US government, who only wish to fund technical improvements, detached from subsidiary social, political, or ideological goals. It could adopt proposals from various open source organizations, including PSF and Capenteries. Quite aside from legal requirements, it should be a equal-opportunity employer and hire on the basis of ability to do the work funded.
Any activities they participated in would surely be subject to the same capricious restrictions. So working with e.g. the PSF would be a risk to such an organization.
You mean like https://www.sovereign.tech ? If so then know that’s the German government making the Sovereign Tech Fund work (and pay Hugo’s salary to be our release manager).
I’m sorry if this is a dumb question; but what exactly is meant with “equity” in this context? It looks like it might have played a role in the decision making process, which I’m trying to understand, but it feels a bit like I’m not seeing the whole picture right now.
Equity is the same goal as equality but whilst actively compensating for initial circumstances. It’s like striving for equal opportunities rather than equal treatment. It can be additional funding towards poorer groups or actively pushing for representation of currently less well represented communities. Or a more Python-centric example would be the existence and promotion of the PyLadies group – equality would demand the existence of a corresponding PyMen group whereas equity would acknowledge that issues that led to PyLadies aren’t ones that men in Python have[1]. A lot of the PSF’s diversity and outreach and representation efforts would be classed as equitable treatment.
The right wing however, including the US government, argue that an equitable treatment, which is by definition not equal treatment, is discrimination against those not in the group it’s actively trying to help. To those in denial of the problems these suppressed/minority groups face[2], equality sounds like it should be the fairer path, but in reality it leads back to the rich white male first ways.