[HN Gopher] PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government gr...
___________________________________________________________________
PSF has withdrawn $1.5M proposal to US Government grant program
Related: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/27/psf-withdrawn-
proposal...
Author : lumpa
Score : 398 points
Date : 2025-10-27 15:12 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pyfound.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (pyfound.blogspot.com)
| theschmed wrote:
| Read to the end. Ways to financially support this important work
| can be found there.
| danbrooks wrote:
| I made a donation. Props to the PSF for standing up.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Step One: get them to a better payment processor than PayPal! I
| waded through it, but that's a high friction funnel.
| metafex wrote:
| Now that's what a backbone looks like.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| Makes me wonder what strings were attached to that Allen AI NSF
| grant. I noticed that they were suddenly using more hawkish
| language around China.
| paloblanco wrote:
| 1.5M is a laughably small number compared to the value that
| financial institutions extract from just having PyPi available. I
| know my company, not financial but still large, has containers
| hitting it every day. How do we get these groups to fork over
| even just a small amount?
| arusahni wrote:
| The PSF and several other organizations that provide public
| package registries wrote an open letter [1] announcing a joint
| effort to make this situation more sustainable. I'll be
| interested to see where it goes.
|
| [1]: https://openssf.org/blog/2025/09/23/open-infrastructure-
| is-n...
| paloblanco wrote:
| Thanks! I want to bring this up as a discussion point when I
| get the chance at work.
|
| I can't find a date on this letter - is it recent?
| fn-mote wrote:
| The date is at the top of the letter and in the url...
|
| September 2025.
| di wrote:
| It says "September 23, 2025" right at the top.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| The website hides the date on mobile
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| I'm rather baffled at the spike in HN folks missing obvious
| dates. You're not the first..
| dsissitka wrote:
| I wonder if they're mobile. Here the URL is truncated and
| over on openssf.org/blog they don't show the date unless
| you switch over to desktop view.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| The website hides the date on mobile
| paloblanco wrote:
| I'm on mobile and missed it. My bad for the spam.
| coloneltcb wrote:
| Get your company to take the Pledge:
| https://opensourcepledge.com/
| NeutralForest wrote:
| That's what we like to hear! Read to the end and donate!
| sega_sai wrote:
| Great job from PSF ! Taking the stand rather them submitting
| themselves to dictatorial/thought-policing terms.
| djoldman wrote:
| > These terms included affirming the statement that we "do not,
| and will not during the term of this financial assistance award,
| operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or
| discriminatory equity ideology _in violation of Federal anti-
| discrimination laws_."
|
| (Emphasis mine)
|
| I'm curious if any lawyer folks could weigh in as to whether this
| language means that the entire sentence requires the mentioned
| programs to be "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination
| laws." If so, one might argue that a "DEI program" was not in
| violation of a Federal anti-discrimination law.
|
| Obviously no one would want to have to go to court and this
| likely would be an unacceptable risk.
| wrs wrote:
| If it was simply an agreement that the recipient won't violate
| Federal law, it wouldn't need to be stated (how could the
| intention be otherwise?). So I read it as an agreement to an
| _interpretation_ that doing those things _would_ violate the
| law.
| politician wrote:
| > I read it as an agreement to an interpretation that doing
| those things would violate the law.
|
| The Executive branch can make any claim it wants, but the
| Judiciary branch has the authority to decide what a
| reviewable claim means.
| fn-mote wrote:
| The GP's point is that it puts recipients in the position
| of having to argue that something they agreed to is
| invalid. This presumably places a higher burden of proof on
| the company.
|
| In the absence of such a statement, the first claim would
| need to be "the DEI program your company runs is against
| federal law", which could then be tested in the courts.
| politician wrote:
| > The GP's point is that it puts recipients in the
| position of having to argue that something they agreed to
| is invalid. This presumably places a higher burden of
| proof on the company.
|
| Understood; while I disagree with the GP's point, I do
| appreciate your response.
|
| I don't believe such example clauses raise the threshold
| for the defense against a claim given that there could be
| practically unlimited number of such examples. I don't
| believe that any such example so highlighted creates an
| effective higher priority than any other possible example
| under 14th amendment equal protection grounds.
| acdha wrote:
| Does the DOJ or PSF have more money for lawyers? If the
| answer isn't the latter, the PSF is quite reasonably
| concluding that regardless of how a fair court might rule
| it would be financially perilous to attempt to stick up for
| the law, especially when a Republican supreme court has a
| fair chance of inventing another pretext for denying
| victory or allowing maximal harm to be done before
| acknowledging the law.
| politician wrote:
| Ok? But that wasn't the OP's argument. Did you reply to
| the wrong thread?
| acdha wrote:
| No. I was just pointing out that your downplaying of the
| risks in this thread is too cavalier: I believe they
| think, as do I, that even the cost of testing the
| legality of a particular interpretation would be crushing
| for a small non-profit.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If it was simply an agreement that the recipient won't
| violate Federal law, it wouldn't need to be stated (how could
| the intention be otherwise?).
|
| Statements about not breaking specific existing laws are
| common in government contracts in the US (at all levels),
| functionally, they make violating the law a breach of
| contract. This enables the government to declare a breach and
| cancel the contract without the litigation that would be
| required for even a civil penalty for breaking the law,
| forcing the contractor to litigate for breach of contract
| (claiming that they did not breach the contract so that the
| government cancellation was itself a breach) instead.
|
| Using a fantasy ("discriminatory equity ideology") with an
| initialism collision with a common inclusivity practice
| (DEI), combined with recent practice by the same
| Administration, is clearly a signal of where the government
| intends to apply the guilty-until-proven-innocent approach in
| this case.
| pavon wrote:
| Or more specifically a warning that the administration
| intends to interpret the law in that manner, whether it is
| true or not. PSF could easily spend more than $1.5M in a
| lawsuit to challenge that interpretation if their grant was
| clawed back, so financially it isn't worth taking the money.
| rck wrote:
| Not a lawyer, but the NSF clause covering clawbacks is pretty
| specific:
|
| > NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance
| awards and recover all funds if recipients, during the term of
| this award, operate any program in violation of Federal
| antidiscriminatory laws or engage in a prohibited boycott.
|
| A "prohibited boycott" is apparently a legal term aimed
| specifically at boycotting Israel/Israeli companies, so unless
| PSF intended to violate federal law or do an Israel boycott,
| they probably weren't at risk. They mention they talked to
| other nonprofits, but don't mention talking to their lawyers. I
| would hope they did consult counsel, because it would be a
| shame to turn down that much money solely on the basis of word
| of mouth from non-attorneys.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| I don't think you are misunderstanding the surface
| requirements, but I think you are mistaking "would
| eventually, with unlimited resources for litigation, prevail
| in litigation over NSF cancelling funds, assuming that the US
| justice system always eventually produces a correct result"
| with "not at risk".
| rck wrote:
| I can imagine that a very risk averse lawyer would have
| pointed out the costs and uncertainties of litigation in
| cases like this. But if I were in their shoes and I really
| cared about the money, I would have pressed that lawyer to
| show examples where the clawback clause had been invoked
| since Jan 20. I'm not sure it's happened, which seems
| relevant to estimating the actual risk.
|
| Interestingly, they may get more in donations than they
| would have from this grant, so maybe that needs to be
| including in the risk estimate as well...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But if I were in their shoes and I really cared about
| the money, I would have pressed that lawyer to show
| examples where the clawback clause had been invoked since
| Jan 20.
|
| And the lawyer would be able to present hundreds of cases
| covering billions of dollars of federal grants, cancelled
| since Trump issued EO 14151 setting in black and white
| the Administration's broad crusade against funding
| anything with contact with DEI and declaring the DEI
| prohibition a policy for all federal grants and
| contracts, under different grant programs, many of which
| were originally awarded before Trump came back to office
| and which would not have had DEI terms in the original
| grant language. They'd also be able to point out that
| some of the cancellations had been litigated to the
| Supreme Court and allowed, other clawbacks had been
| struck down by lower courts and were still in appeals.
| rck wrote:
| Yeah it looks like about 1500 grants:
|
| https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/nsf-has-canceled-
| more-1500-...
|
| But if the concern is about the provision allowing NSF to
| claw back funds that have been spent by the organization
| then the question remains: has that happened? Right now
| if you search for terms related to NSF clawbacks, most of
| the top results refer to the PSF's statement or forum
| discussions about it (like this one). I can't find any
| instances of a federal clawback related to DEI. If that
| had happened I would assume that the response from the
| awardee would have been noisy.
| aspir wrote:
| This isn't good for the PSF, but if these "poison pill" terms are
| a pattern that applies to all NSF and (presumably) other
| government research funding, the entire state of modern
| scientific research is at risk.
|
| Regardless of how you, as an individual, might feel about "DEI,"
| imposing onerous political terms on scientific grants harms
| everyone in the long term.
| numbsafari wrote:
| The direction of political winds shift over time. An
| organization like the PSF cannot assume an open-ended liability
| like that. DEI today, but what tomorrow? As we have seen,
| political leadership in the US has shown itself to be
| unreliable, pernicious, and vindictive.
|
| US leadership is undermined by the politicization of these
| grants. That is something that members of this community,
| largely a US-based, VC-oriented audience, should be deeply,
| deeply troubled by.
| xeonmc wrote:
| I wonder, how likely do you think there would be a
| retaliatory threat of revoking PSF's nonprofit status for a
| perceived snub in rejecting the offer?
| elevation wrote:
| The IRS has withheld 501(c) status from the president's
| perceived adversaries before[0]. But I haven't heard of
| 501(c) status being revoked.
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy
| mgraczyk wrote:
| "The FBI stated it found no evidence of "enemy hunting"
| of the kind that had been suspected, but that the
| investigation did reveal the IRS to be a mismanaged
| bureaucracy enforcing rules that IRS personnel did not
| fully understand. "
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The sad irony is that the staff understood it perfectly,
| the organizations were not legitimate 501c groups (since
| at the time we had enforceable rules around political
| activity by nonprofit groups) but through extremely bad
| faith investigations where Congressional republicans
| literally forbade the IRS from reporting on their barring
| of climate and 'progressive' groups when investigating
| the 'scandal' so that even today people mischaracterize
| it as an example of IRS political targeting.
|
| https://thehill.com/policy/finance/154584-ig-audit-of-
| irs-ac...
| rat87 wrote:
| I don't think that's a good summary of what happened.
| From your wiki link
|
| > In 2013, the United States Internal Revenue Service
| (IRS), under the Obama administration, revealed that it
| had selected political groups applying for tax-exempt
| status for intensive scrutiny based on their names or
| political themes. This led to wide condemnation of the
| agency and triggered several investigations, including a
| Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) criminal probe
| ordered by United States Attorney General Eric Holder.
| Conservatives claimed that they were specifically
| targeted by the IRS, but an exhaustive report released by
| the Treasury Department's Inspector General in 2017 found
| that from 2004 to 2013, the IRS used both conservative
| and liberal keywords to choose targets for further
| scrutiny.
|
| > The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration's
| audit found (page 14): "For the 296 potential political
| cases we reviewed, as of December 17, 2012, 108
| applications had been approved, 28 were withdrawn by the
| applicant, none had been denied, and 160 cases were open
| from 206 to 1,138 calendar days (some crossing two
| election cycles)."[11] Bloomberg News reported on May 14,
| 2013, "None of the Republican groups have said their
| applications were rejected."
|
| The IRS took some stupid shortcuts by trying to look at
| keywords (including those linked to liberal causes) for
| more scrutiny of if they met the criteria of a non
| profit. There's no evidence this was done based on
| partisanship and it did not cause any groups to be
| rejected
| pbiggar wrote:
| The Trump administration is definitively coming after
| 501c3s. I run a nonprofit and all the movement around us
| has been preparing for this since these laws were first
| announced. Ironcically, the laws to investigate
| nonprofits were first proposed under the Biden
| administration to attack the Palestine movement, and like
| most things in the Palestine movement, they were quickly
| turned against the rest of the country.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/the-trump-administration-is-
| comi...
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Also, I don't get that an Organization such as the PSF operates
| at a $5 million dollar budget which quite arguably provides
| Billions or even Trillions in revenue across the Tech sector.
| aspir wrote:
| This is an unfortunate state of all open source. The entire
| economic model is broken, but PSF is one of the better
| operationalized groups out there.
|
| Not to completely change the topic, but to add context, the
| Ruby Central drama that has unfolded over the past few weeks
| originally began as a brainstorm to raise ~$250k in annual
| funds.
| bgwalter wrote:
| PSF money does not really go into development. Some inner
| circle members have been sponsored to do maintenance work,
| but Python would be largely the same with zero donations.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| Pretty bold statement with no evidence.
| lumpa wrote:
| Here's some evidence that he is, again, badmouthing the
| PSF without a good reason:
| https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-
| psfs-2024-annual-im...
| flufluflufluffy wrote:
| They do apply, also for NIH funded research. I work in
| healthcare research and all the investigators I know have had
| to go to great lengths to whitewash their grant proposals (you
| can't use the word "gender" for example, you must say
| "difference" instead of "disparity", etc etc...)
|
| It's absolutely bonkers. However most of the researchers I work
| with are operating under a "appease the NIH to obtain the
| grant, but the just do the research as it was originally
| intended" approach. It not like the federal government has the
| ability (or staffing - hah!) to ensure every single awardee is
| complying with these dystopian requirements.
| qcnguy wrote:
| That's a bad idea. Grant fraud is illegal. It'd be easy to
| use AI to find simple euphemism treadmills, and also to check
| if the published papers aren't related to the grant that
| funded them.
|
| This will eventually escalate to large scale prosecutions of
| academics. And, they will lose, because they are very openly
| boasting about how they are ignoring the law and even court
| orders. It was recently discovered that one college had
| claimed they'd shut down their DEI office but had actually
| just moved it to a restricted area. This kind of blatant
| lying is biting the hand that feeds them and will have severe
| consequences.
| takluyver wrote:
| The requirements the GP is describing are to avoid using
| certain words. It's not fraudulent to describe the same
| work without using the banned words.
| qcnguy wrote:
| That's definitely not the requirement! The requirement is
| to avoid doing certain kinds of "research" that the
| government disagrees is valid research to fund,
| characterized by the principles underlying it.
|
| They may have started by using certain keywords to find
| examples of such grants to terminate, but the requirement
| itself has nothing to do with words and everything to do
| with the intentions.
| convolvatron wrote:
| I know someone whose grant was cancelled for studying
| genetic diversity in animal populations.
| acdha wrote:
| The "requirements" are vague and still being litigated
| against congressional intent, but the problem is the
| scale: when you have so many complex things to review and
| only a few trusted political apparatchiks, they end up
| doing things like simple keyword searches for terms like
| "diversity" and "inclusion" blithely aware of those being
| used in fields such as geology.
|
| I know this because I know people who've had to take time
| away from their research to keep their grants from being
| cancelled.
| pavon wrote:
| Its not fraud. The grant proposal accurately describes the
| research occurring, and people evaluating the grant will
| have no misconception about what they are funding. The
| problem is that political appointees have been applying
| dumb keyword searches which block research that has nothing
| to do with the issues they object to. Like using privilege
| in the computer security sense. Or bias in the statistical
| sense, unrelated to political leaning.
| aalimov_ wrote:
| Take a look at the comments left by that profile. I don't
| think that they would be able to understand what you are
| saying here, all they see is red.
|
| A partial recent comment "qcnguy" made: "DEI is an
| immoral, hate based and anti-truth ideology. Requiring
| the PSF to dump DEI if they want the money is good for
| everyone, because DEI is bad for people"
| LexiMax wrote:
| It's worth pointing out that this profile has been around
| for three months and already has enough karma to have
| access to the "flag" and "vouch" tools.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| Even on HN, we're still human and hungry for controversy.
| nxobject wrote:
| > However most of the researchers I work with are operating
| under a "appease the NIH to obtain the grant, but the just do
| the research as it was originally intended" approach. It not
| like the federal government has the ability (or staffing -
| hah!) to ensure every single awardee is complying with these
| dystopian requirements.
|
| It's also the same program officers stewarding grant
| administration after administration, anyway. I don't mean
| this negatively: they're broad but still subject matter
| experts, parachuting in new people would be administrative
| malpractice, and they know just as much what conclusions can
| and can't be drawn from an analysis plan.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's also the same program officers stewarding grant
| administration after administration, anyway.
|
| Historically, yes; as well as firing leadership and moving
| decisions usually made further down the chain up to the new
| leadership, this administration has _also_ fired a lot of
| the existing grant reviewers in most of the big health an
| science grant-issuing agencies (and probably smaller ones,
| too, but those would have made fewer headlines) as part of
| the political purges of, well, a lot of the federal civil
| service earlier this year.
| dangus wrote:
| I am going to add my own stronger language than yours: if you
| don't feel positively about diversity, equity, and inclusion,
| then you are sending a message that you instead support
| homogeneity, inequity, and exclusion.
|
| If you believe those things, you should think long and hard
| about what that means to make that your creed and why those
| concepts are so important to this administration to value, and
| why they seek to make those ideas defacto illegal.
|
| If you believe those things, you should think long and hard
| about what it means to live by them when you live upon soil
| that was stolen and conquested from its original inhabitants.
|
| This isn't about an administration trying to correct "reverse
| racism" or innocently trying to reform legitimately unfair
| affirmative action programs.
|
| No, this is an administration that is copy/pasting the Nazi
| playbook and, as we speak right now, is literally sending a
| military force upon on its own people. It is a factual,
| verified, witnessed truth that this military force is
| conducting warrantless detentions and deportations which have
| not just included undocumented immigrants (who still have
| constitutional rights and are not committing a criminal offense
| by existing in this country), but also US citizens.
|
| The last video I watched of an ICE interaction was of a masked
| anonymous agent harassing a random person in a Walmart parking
| lot asking her where she was born, quite literally doing the
| "papers, please" routine that we used to assume was a Stalinist
| Soviet Union routine that could never reach our shores, and he
| was doing so solely because she was brown and spoke Spanish.
| This was one video of many others infractions by this gestapo
| force.
|
| No, this isn't some kind of legitimate operation to root out
| gangs and criminals like my Fox News parents have insisted to
| me many times - and even if it was, I am not so sure a gang of
| masked federal agents working for an authoritarian executive
| branch who take their cases to a court that is also under the
| control of the executive branch is an upgrade over our "gang-
| infested" status quo.
|
| Yes, it's important we make a stand right now and refuse to aid
| this fascist regime, and refuse to capitulate to their insane
| and unconstitutional demands.
| philipallstar wrote:
| > I am going to add my own stronger language than yours: if
| you don't feel positively about diversity, equity, and
| inclusion, then you are sending a message that you instead
| support homogeneity, inequity, and exclusion.
|
| This "if you're not for us you're against us" is a very
| broken way of thinking.
|
| It excludes the many, many more people just don't care about
| diversity and want the best people in a role regardless of
| ethnicity or sex or anything else. That's not "pro
| homogeneity" - only someone whose perspective is entirely
| warped by this one factor would think that way.
| ajross wrote:
| > It excludes the many, many more people
|
| Are these people actually attested? In my experience,
| virtually everyone I've ever seen make a strong argument
| against "DEI" ended up having some... unsavory attitudes
| more generally. Scratch hard in discussion or check post
| histories[1] and you end up at some variant of white
| nationalism or men's rights, almost every time.
|
| Basically no one goes to bat for "wanting the best people
| in a role". People get political when they feel aggrieved.
| "DEI mania" is always a response to "I think this is going
| to hurt people like me".
|
| [1] Edit: I did. And... well...
| rowanG077 wrote:
| men's right? I'm shuddering in my chair. Next you tell me
| they volunteer for a homeless shelter too.
| machomaster wrote:
| > virtually everyone I've ever seen make a strong
| argument against "DEI" ended up having (...) men's rights
|
| So people who dislike a cultural type of discrimination
| also dislike practical discrimination against men? People
| who dislike what is going on in general, also have
| practical opinions how the situation could be improved in
| practice, how to make the situation more fair?
|
| This is akin to being surprised that people who are
| actively against animal abuse are also helping animal
| shelters.
| dangus wrote:
| > This "if you're not for us you're against us" is a very
| broken way of thinking.
|
| This is the paradox of tolerance is invoked.
|
| The people in the present administration have been blowing
| white supremacist and pro-violence dog whistles for over a
| decade now.
|
| If you are "with that" then yes, you are against us.
|
| This is not to say that I am intending to be hostile and
| unwelcoming to those who have been deceived by this regime.
| Germany had to go through the deprogramming process at the
| end of World War II. They didn't just throw every single
| ordinary person who ever supported the Nazi party in jail
| or socially shun them for life, they went through a healing
| process.
| philipallstar wrote:
| > The people in the present administration have been
| blowing white supremacist and pro-violence dog whistles
| for over a decade now.
|
| I think this is in itself a huge problem. You've been
| told this, repeatedly, for 10 years, which explains why
| so much of the political violence (and celebration
| thereof) is on the left in the US. Why do you still
| believe dogwhistles to be a bigger problem than actual
| violence?
| dangus wrote:
| I haven't been told this, I have witnessed it as a
| primary source. I watched Trump tell cops that they
| should rough up suspects. I watched Trump tell the
| January 6 crowd that they need to fight like hell or
| they'll lose this country. I watched Trumpers erect
| gallows for Mike Pence. I watched Trump tell the Proud
| Boys to stand back and stand by like they were his
| personal goon squad. I watched Trump say that second
| amendment people could help stop his opposition.
|
| This "violence on the left" that you speak of, I haven't
| personally seen a whole lot of it.
|
| No Kings was the largest protest in American history and
| not a single person was arrested for any protest
| infraction in New York City. The NYPD publicly announced
| it.
|
| How many people wearing Joe Biden hats breached the
| capitol? Is there any left-wing violence in the past few
| decades of America that you would call more extreme than
| breaking into the capitol building?
| nxor wrote:
| Charlie Kirk. Even Van Jones, who was publically fighting
| with Kirk, was blown away by that murder. And then people
| wonder why we shy away from the trans movement. I have
| countless friends who celebrated his death. So sickening.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| "so much of the political violence (and celebration
| thereof) is on the left in the US"
|
| Biiiiiiiig citation needed. By every available metric,
| right-wing terror attacks dominate the political violence
| numbers in the US. I don't know what fantasy world you've
| been living in, but frankly it sounds pretty sweet to me.
|
| And mass violence is a worse problem than targeted
| violence. Whether or not you think they deserved it, the
| notable cases of left-wing violence in the last year have
| been individual targets. When the right commits violence,
| they roll up to a synagogue and gun down everyone inside.
| Or a gay nightclub. Or they slam a couple planes into
| buildings (yeah, if you're going to lump the left
| together, then you can't complain when the right gets
| lumped together).
| thsName wrote:
| To paraphrase: ``` Biiiiiiiig citation needed. By every
| available metric, left-wing terror attacks dominate the
| political violence numbers in the US. I don't know what
| fantasy world you've been living in, but frankly it
| sounds pretty sweet to me.
|
| And mass violence is a worse problem than targeted
| violence. Whether or not you think they deserved it, the
| notable cases of right-wing violence in the last year
| have been individual targets. When the left commits
| violence, they roll up to a synagogue and gun down
| everyone inside. Or a gay nightclub. Or they slam a
| couple planes into buildings (yeah, if you're going to
| lump the right together, then you can't complain when the
| left gets lumped together). ```
|
| Both he and you are empty talkers who simply insult the
| other side without any basis.
| jeromegv wrote:
| If the talibans are the left and progressive, I don't
| know what to tell you. You're too far gone
| nxor wrote:
| But do you care that the gay nightclub in Florida was
| shot up by a self hating gay / bi Muslim? Well, you
| don't. Because it doesn't fit your view.
| machomaster wrote:
| You should check what constitutes the "right-wing terror
| attacks". You will be surprised to know that they include
| attacks made by Islamic radicals.
| nxor wrote:
| Exactly this. I am a minority and sinking acceptance of
| us is due to the behavior of liberals making the rest of
| us look entitled and truth-averse.
| didibus wrote:
| The issue is more complex.
|
| If groups of people are disadvantaged from birth and then
| throughout their life, it's unlikely they will be the best
| at anything.
|
| But you could imagine that the person with the best
| potential was part of that group.
|
| In effect, an unjust society that doesn't allow fair equal
| opportunities from birth and throughout life is sub-optimal
| at yielding the best candidates for any given role, as it
| artificially restricts the pool.
|
| The other complexity is the inherent bias in the assessment
| process. How people assess who is best qualified has tons
| of bias. Again, that means the selection is sub-optimal at
| finding the actually best candidate.
|
| It becomes hard to talk of meritocracy when most people's
| performance derive from circumstances like birth, wealth,
| connections. Someone else might have performed even better
| had they'd been given the same circumstances.
|
| Finally, you have the problem of not maximizing everyone's
| potential even if they're not going to be the best.
|
| Obviously we can't have the best at every job. Only one
| company will have the real best at any given role. Most
| jobs will be done by the average performer. That's a
| mathematical truth.
|
| Thus raising the average has tremendous lift in raising
| quality of work accross the board.
|
| In order to raise the average, you have to give everyone
| what they need to max out their potential, even if one's
| potential is lower. That might mean some need more than
| others, disabled people are a good example, they'll need
| lots of compensating equipment and what not to maximize
| their potential and raise their overall effect to society.
|
| To me, those are the basis problems that people were trying
| to solve. Obviously, a lot of the solutions to these became
| performative dances, but I think the problem statement
| aligns well with what you have too.
|
| The idea being that the person right now that we seem best
| qualified is truly the best isn't true unless we achieve a
| better system at maximizing people's potential.
|
| Thus true meritocracy demands accepting diversity, equity,
| inclusion and fair equal opportunities.
|
| Without it, you're only circumstancially demonstrably the
| best, and you never know if you truly are the better one.
| dangus wrote:
| This complex discussion does exist, you're right.
|
| At the same time, this complex discussion is not what the
| present administration is engaging in.
|
| At best they are using it as a cover story.
| machomaster wrote:
| You have a lot of incorrect logic. I will only comment on
| one.
|
| > In order to raise the average, you have to give
| everyone what they need to > max out their potential,
| even if one's potential is lower.
|
| Wrong. There are limited resources and it is not feasible
| to give every person every opportunity. "Let's give
| everybody a chance to become an opera singer, an Olympic
| 100m winner or a lotto winner, to see how they will use
| that chance. Even if they won't be any good at this and
| waste money, at least they will raise their starting
| position, improve on their potential and raise the
| average!". This is just silly. No, it is mathematically
| impossible to give every opportunity to every person.
|
| If anything, giving extra resources to worse people (with
| lower potential) is a waste of resources (money, human).
| It makes no sense to make a potentially brilliant
| mathematician an below-average kindergarten teacher,
| while forcing a good teacher-to-be, to become a 20-years-
| in-a-making-junior-vibe-programmer. This is a terrible
| idea for economy, society and individual people
| (including the ones that DEI are trying to promote).
| People have different preferences and different abilities
| (some have in many areas, many have in a few, some are
| terrible at everything). Maximizing potential should be
| based on an individual's merit. Fair and equal
| opportunities will naturally lead to different results,
| because people are different. You can't simultaneously
| have equity and equal opportunities, discrimination
| (racism, sexism, DEI) and inclusion, equity and
| efficiency.
| trehalose wrote:
| Would you still be the best person for your current role if
| you'd been excluded from your education and
| training/previous roles based on your ethnicity/sex?
| philipallstar wrote:
| Definitely not, if I'd not had the relevant education,
| training, or experience. But we have a giant, expensive
| state and corporate apparatus to correct this, but it's
| not based on this actual experience. It's based on
| demographics. Making it incredibly inaccurate.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >It excludes the many, many more people just don't care
| about diversity and want the best people in a role
| regardless of ethnicity or sex or anything else.
|
| No human being has ever objectively evaluated a candidate
| on their "merits" and ignored their ethnicity, sex, etc.
|
| That's not how the human brain _can_ work.
|
| That does not mean I support the "if you aren't with us,
| you're against us" ideology, but this absurdist belief that
| the majority of humans do a good job of avoiding prejudice
| has never ever been supported by reality.
|
| If that were true, American race based slavery would not
| have been controversial, it would have been _utterly
| undoable_. It was possible because it is trivial for the
| human brain to dehumanize others. It 's an integral part of
| our brain that was used for generations to maintain social
| alignment. It doesn't go away just because we banned
| slavery.
|
| Human biases are so bad, most of the point of science is to
| _stop trusting human reasoning at all_.
|
| We have to _triple_ blind studies with medicine, because
| despite everyone involved being fairly educated in the
| domain, they will _still_ fuck up data with their biases.
| Doctors will _accidentally_ fuck up a drug trial because
| they are human. They don 't want to, because they know that
| would be a huge waste of resources and time and human
| labor, but they do because _the brain doesn 't care what
| you think you want_. It isn't constructed to.
|
| And I'm not talking bias as some political bullshit. I'm
| talking bias as in, human beings will reliably make the
| same _statistical_ mistakes because our brains overfit a
| few data points all the damn time, _and only attempt to
| even fit data points after we 've already made up our
| mind_.
|
| Statisticians will still experience gambling fallacies.
| latexr wrote:
| > It excludes the many, many more people just don't care
| about diversity and want the best people in a role
| regardless of ethnicity or sex or anything else.
|
| You often don't know who the "best" person is for a role
| until they're in it. Diversity is good because it allows
| for different perspectives and catching your own blind
| spots. Because we don't understand different backgrounds as
| well as our own, we can fail to understand the unique
| strengths someone brings to the table simply by being
| different.
| abbycurtis33 wrote:
| This is mystical thinking. We can establish systems for
| hiring based on capability.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| We've yet to establish such a system, so I'm not holding
| out much hope (and anyone who has been through a handful
| of tech interview loops ought to realise this)
| devmor wrote:
| This is also sounds like mystical thinking or some kind
| of idealism. What safeguard prevents the interference and
| subversion by the class(es) that already control hiring
| and cause the problem that society desires to solve?
|
| A meritocracy would of course, benefit everyone, but in
| creating systems that decide merit, we demonstrably have
| always created biases that preserve the control of
| someone involved in creating those systems.
| rat87 wrote:
| We can? I'm pretty sure companies have spent billions
| trying to achieve this and failed. The best they can do
| is maybe sort of sometime hire people that are good
| enough
| rileymat2 wrote:
| Sometimes those are directly out of the DEI playbook when
| you see discrepancies in hiring.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_audition
|
| I'd wager that most directors thought they were picking
| the person with the most merit, and they seemingly were
| not.
| speakfreely wrote:
| No one has a problem with diversity as a competitive
| advantage. People dislike forced diversity in lieu of
| meritocracy.
| JPKab wrote:
| It's funny how the quest for "unique strengths" entirely
| ignores people with pale skin who grew up in trailer
| parks in Appalachia or farms in the midwest, despite the
| fact that they are dramatically underrepresented in our
| industry and in elite universities.
|
| The DEI policies favor people with dark skin (as long as
| they're not Asian) and 1250 SATs from wealthy suburbs
| over pale skin 1450 SATs from rural backwaters. It's
| discrimination, it's "diversity" only on the surface.
| Incredibly shallow, condescending, and dehumanizing. It's
| so shallow that in most of the places it's implemented,
| it doesn't differentiate between descendants of slaves
| and recent West African immigrants, some of whom are
| wealthy descendants of the elites who captured and sold
| slaves in ports like Lagos.
|
| And before you call me a bigot: My kids are "bi-racial",
| so if you think i'm a nazi, ask yourself why I hate my
| wife and kids.
| nxor wrote:
| I agree with you, and I am a minority, but as someone
| from the midwest, sometimes people here fail to succeed
| because they are lazy, like any other person.
| Midwesterners are modest, and this is great, but the
| stereotype that we are somehow more hardworking is lost
| on me.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| i'm one of those poor whites you're talking about (from
| another region; ethnic and economic bases covered
| though). you believe falsehoods.
|
| > And before you call me a bigot: My kids are "bi-
| racial", so if you think i'm a nazi, ask yourself why I
| hate my wife and kids.
|
| i would never ask you that. but i wonder if you should
| ask yourself how your views could potentially negatively
| impact your relationships with your family.
| zuminator wrote:
| Entirely ignores? There actually are DEI type initiatives
| specifically designed to benefit Appalachians, such as
| https://www.arc.gov/grants-and-opportunities/ or more
| locally, https://www.ovrdc.org/the-appalachian-community-
| grant-progra.... Of course, Appalachia isn't just poor
| white people, there are historically black and native
| populations within its vast expanse.
|
| Also, certainly someone can have principled opposition to
| DEI without being called a Nazi. But frankly, having a
| wife or kids "of color" doesn't necessarily prove
| anything one way or another. Lots of plantation owners in
| the 19th century also had biracial kids while somehow
| maintaining their raging bigotry. We humans are quite
| skilled at compartmentalizing.
| belorn wrote:
| Diversity is good when it is either applied in a neutral
| and identify-agnostic way, or if we as a society all
| agree on which groups deserve getting benefits and which
| ones don't.
|
| The first one is sadly horrible disliked and tend to lose
| support as soon the "wrong" demographic get benefits. If
| you have a diversity program to benefit minority X, and
| then later X become majority, then the program get
| canceled rather than applied for any new minority. The
| programs always get designed with a specific target in
| mind.
|
| Similar for the second, if a group get popular support,
| diversity programs will help those while ignore any
| similar but disliked group. The program is not there to
| fix diversity, it is to help the intended group. When the
| political environment becomes polarized, it becomes very
| clear which groups get support from which side.
|
| It has been very clear by diversity programs, and those
| who oppose diversity programs, that no one want a
| difference in perspectives, or for that matter catching
| their own blind spots.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| It's not an "us vs them" situation, that's just a strawman
| argument.
|
| The real point is that you either believe that _all_ humans
| are worthy of the same rights and respects _by default_
| then you 're a bad person.
|
| Such people aren't against "us" they're against _everyone_
| apart from _their_ select group of the "right kind" of
| people.
|
| This isn't a quid pro quo or zero sum bullshit. This is a
| matter of _being a moral person_ or not. It 's not even an
| opinion, it's the cold hard fact that if you think entire
| groups of people are subhuman, unworthy of basic rights,
| and fit to be abducted abused and deported, you are a bad
| person. It's that cut and dry.
|
| You either think all people should be equal or you don't.
| You either want a civilized society for _everyone_ or you
| only want it for the "right kind" of people. One of these
| stances is _objectively moral_ and the other is
| _objectively bad_
| machomaster wrote:
| And that's exactly the point. DEI and other "positive"
| discriminatory practices are making the field uneven for
| people. People should be treated as individuals,
| representing themselves and standing for their own
| abilities, instead of being treated as members of
| whatever group. Those type of racists, sexists and DEI
| activists are objectively bad people.
| nxor wrote:
| Exactly! They try to free us from this thinking by
| forcing everyone to follow it.
| drstewart wrote:
| I am going to going even further than you and suggest if you
| are an American do not support America First, that means you
| instead support America Last.
|
| If you believe that, you should think about what other
| countries and groups support those kinds of things, and what
| kind of company supporting terrorist groups puts you in.
|
| No, there isn't a legitimate reason not to want America
| First.
|
| Yes, it's important we call out anyone and stand against
| people who want to tear down America and fully pursue all
| applicable laws that apply to this destructive behavior.
| 1121redblackgo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Pretty sure it was an attempt at satire or reductio ad
| absurdem.
| 1121redblackgo wrote:
| I'm not sure it was
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| It was the exact same political absurdist talking point,
| just swapping "DEI" for "America First". Come on.
| dangus wrote:
| America first I assume now means "South America First" in
| regard to financially bailing out Argentina in exchange for
| political favors.
| drstewart wrote:
| Yes, better than getting nothing in return for those
| billions by giving them out to warlords in Africa for
| luxury cars and airplanes... I mean "aid"
| dangus wrote:
| lol, there are so many impeachment-worthy scandals it is
| hard to keep track of. I completely forgot about the free
| airplane.
|
| Nixon is rolling in his grave with envy. He has to resign
| over a parking ticket by comparison.
| neilcj wrote:
| Almost hourly, I am reminded that Jimmy Carter had to put
| his unprofitable inherited peanut farm in a blind trust.
| k1rd wrote:
| Isn't the opposite of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion by de
| Morgan law homogeneity or inequity or exclusion?
| xeonmc wrote:
| Discrimination, Exclusion, Inequity.
| AlSweigart wrote:
| I am going add more on top of that: we should automatically
| assume bad faith of anyone still willing, in 2025, to give
| the Trump administration the benefit of the doubt.
| jl6 wrote:
| > if you don't feel positively about diversity, equity, and
| inclusion, then you are sending a message that you instead
| support homogeneity, inequity, and exclusion
|
| No, because we are not talking about Boolean variables where
| you can discover the logical opposite by negation. These are
| words with deeply fuzzy meanings. Supporters can support the
| best possible meanings, and opposers can oppose the worst
| possible meanings, and be closer to consensus than this
| binary, polarized, with-us-or-against-us rhetoric might
| imply.
| chermi wrote:
| No. Incorrect. 1) DEI as a movement is not the only route
| towards those goals. You can oppose the method without
| opposing the goal. As a relevant example, one can oppose ICE
| while believing immigration law should be enforced. But I'm
| guessing you think even wanting immigration law enforced is
| Nazi behavior based on your post. 2) There are many valid
| reasons to oppose the measures of success advocated by DEI.
| For example, if there's a natural disposition of a gender
| toward one field, at what point is insisting on equity seen
| as silly(1)? Further, if you think there is no such intrinsic
| imbalance in preferences, at what point do you admit you're
| going off (authoritarian) vibes to impose your worldview
| rather than going off science that I'm sure you believe in.
| Strict adherence to DEI would literally require forcing
| people into careers they don't want in order to meet goals.
| And an individual's opposition to such force would be
| wrongthink, the DEI administrators know better(2). How can
| someone be so certain and aggressive in their beliefs that,
| despite visible counter-evidence and a near-majotity of the
| populatiom disagreeing, they believe they are not only
| justified but righteous in their insistence that the
| government impose their worldview on everyone. It's
| evangelical religious behavior. I can only assume it's an
| echo chamber effect. If you look around and find everyone
| agrees with you on everything, well...
|
| 1 - look up the gender-equality paradox in STEM.
|
| 2 - This is not some abstract hypothetical. There are many
| stories of women feeling guilty for not wanting to go into
| STEM to the point they do so anyway and regret it. Its not
| much different than a parent insisting their kid become a
| doctor or lawyer. To be clear, I understand there are
| barriers the other way. I worked in outreach during my PhD to
| encourage and excite young women (and other historically
| statitically underrepresented groups) to study physics. But
| encouragement is different than governement-enforced
| insistence there be an equal number of women and men in every
| physics department in every subfield.
| politician wrote:
| The requirement that grantees not violate existing laws is
| common in Federal grants. Taking umbrage with the DEI
| coloration on this entirely reasonable and standard requirement
| is absurd. There could be a long laundry list of such clauses
| that all have equally zero weight ("don't promote illegal drug
| trafficking", "don't promote illegal insider trading", ...).
| takluyver wrote:
| If it has zero weight, why would the grant agreement
| specifically highlight it? I would guess it's much easier to
| enforce a particular interpretation of the law via a grant
| agreement than having to argue it in court.
| politician wrote:
| > Why would the grant agreement specifically highlight it?
|
| I would humbly suggest that it mentions this particular
| example because the NSF administrator serves under the
| pleasure of the Executive and they have been tasked to
| demonstrate that they are following the orders of the
| Executive branch.
|
| However, the inclusion of this specific example confers no
| higher priority than any other possible example. It has no
| weight; it is inoperative.
| takluyver wrote:
| OK, I accept that as a possible reason why it might be
| written there even if it has no weight. But it still
| seems very likely that it's easier to terminate a grant -
| and harder for the PSF to argue against that - than to
| actually prosecute DEI work and prove in court that it's
| illegal.
| politician wrote:
| You say, paraphrasing, "It's harder to prove that a DEI
| program violates Federal anti-discrimination laws than it
| is to simply terminate a grant to an undesirable
| grantee."
|
| Ok. Suppose that's true. The government can terminate
| grants that don't include that language equally as easily
| -- and, indeed, I just found that there are multiple
| current cases against the government for doing exactly
| that: health grants [1], solar grants [2], education
| grants [3].
|
| Is your point is that the inclusion of this inoperative
| language makes it easier than it already is for the
| government to cancel grants and to defend against the
| subsequent lawsuits until the plaintiffs are pressured
| into compliance from lack of funding?
|
| [1]https://coag.gov/press-releases/weiser-sues-hhs-
| kennedy-publ...
| [2]https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-
| energy/state-c... [3]https://www.k12dive.com/news/state-
| lawsuit-Education-Departm...
| davorak wrote:
| > It has no weight; it is inoperative.
|
| You are claiming that if the PSF took the grant and the
| NSF, or the president, decided the PSF was promoting DEI
| they would not be able to claw back funds?
| counters wrote:
| If it's inoperative then it shouldn't be in the language
| of the grant. Full stop.
|
| The language itself also overly broad. The stipulation
| from the grant didn't just cover activities funded by the
| grant itself. In the very language quoted on the PSF
| blog, they needed to affirm that as an organization they
| "do not, and will not during the term of this financial
| assistance award, operate any programs that advance or
| promote DEI." Read that again. The language expressly
| states that they cannot operate ANY programs that advance
| or promote DEI during the term of the award. So if a PSF
| member volunteers with PyLadies, would that count as
| "advanc[ing] or promot[ing] DEI?"
|
| In the real world, no one would _ever_ sign a contract
| with this sort of poison pill on it. If something like
| this was found buried in a contract I was evaluating with
| my lawyer, we'd immediately redline it as overly broad
| and overbearing.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If it's inoperative then it shouldn't be in the
| language of the grant.
|
| It's not inoperative. A contract requirement that is
| redundant with a legal requirement still has separate
| effect (that is explicit here since this clause is a
| basis for both cancelling an award that has already been
| made and clawing back funds that have already been
| disbursed, _separate_ from any penalties for the
| violation of the law itself.)
|
| > In the real world, no one would _ever_ sign a contract
| with this sort of poison pill on it.
|
| If by "this kind" you just mean "incorporating existing
| legal obligations separately as contract obligations with
| contractual consequences", every government contract has
| multiple such clauses and has for decades.
|
| If by "this kind" you mean more narrowly incorporating
| the specific anti-DEI provisions and partisan propaganda
| about DEI inside the clause also incorporating existing
| legal requirements, I'm pretty sure you will find that
| most federal contracts that have had their language
| drafted in the last few months have something like that
| because of agency implementations of EO 14151. How many
| people are signinf them...well, I would say look at
| whoever is still getting federal money, but given the
| shutdown that's harder to see...
| eirikbakke wrote:
| The "rule against surplusage": Where one reading of a
| statute would make one or more parts of the statute
| redundant and another reading would avoid the redundancy,
| the other reading is preferred.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_interpretation
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Grant agreements are not statutes but contracts, and
| canons of statutory interpretation do not apply to
| contracts.
| eirikbakke wrote:
| Perhaps a better source (but IANAL):
|
| "Judges frequently invoke anti-redundancy principles in
| the interpretation of legal language, whether it appears
| in classic private-law documents such as contracts or
| classic public law-documents such as constitutions and
| statutes."
|
| Redundancy: When Law Repeats Itself, John M. Golden
| (2016)
| philipallstar wrote:
| It would be very good for the PSF if it can get grant money
| without DEI things. Before you needed to have them to get much
| of a look-in.
|
| Now it can spend the money on important stuff like packaging.
| uv is amazing, but also a symptom of the wrong people
| stewarding that money.
| JPKab wrote:
| The "poison pill" terms are not at all a new thing. They have
| existed for a long time, and were one of the main drivers of
| the highly aggressive "guilty until proven innocent" cancel
| culture within academia, where a PhD gets accused non-credibly,
| is blackballed from NSF funding, exiled from academia, and
| years later it's discovered they were innocent of the charges.
| GemesAS wrote:
| Prior to the current administration there's been a ratcheting
| up of political influence / social engineering on science
| grants as well. The last DoE Office of Science grant I applied
| to had a DEI requirement that was also used during screening.
| My preference would all this political influence be dialed
| down.
| chermi wrote:
| I'm not taking a stance, I just want to point out that the
| previous grant system (the "dei" one) could very easily and
| justifiably be seen as "imposing onerous political terms" on
| funding as well. You could say the pendulum motion has too
| large an amplitude.
| di wrote:
| For some context on the scale of this grant, the PSF took in only
| $1M in "Contributions, Membership Dues, & Grants" in 2024:
| https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2024/
| talawahtech wrote:
| Thanks for posting this. I just made a donation to the PSF.
| etchalon wrote:
| Donated, and happy to.
|
| It's shocking how fast this administration has gotten
| institutions to abandon their beliefs, and ones that don't should
| be rewarded.
| burnerRhodov2 wrote:
| So, all these clauses where changed back in Feb/ March. They
| definitely had to agree to the amendments on their grants, and
| they still had funding until October 1st. So, I feel like this is
| revisionist history because they would have been notified way
| before today to renew thier grant.
|
| So they signed the amendments and spent the money...
| its-summertime wrote:
| > In January 2025, the PSF submitted a proposal to the US
| government National Science Foundation under the Safety,
| Security, and Privacy of Open Source Ecosystems program to
| address structural vulnerabilities in Python and PyPI.
|
| > It was the PSF's first time applying for government funding.
|
| It doesn't seem to be a renewal, and they seem to have applied
| before the clauses were added.
|
| - - -
|
| Additionally, on September 29, 2025, the NSF posted
|
| > The U.S. National Science Foundation announced the first-ever
| Safety, Security, and Privacy of Open-Source Ecosystems (NSF
| Safe-OSE) investment in an inaugural cohort of 8 teams
|
| Implying that until that point, there was no distribution of
| funds as part of Safe-OSE, so no prior years of funding existed
| burnerRhodov2 wrote:
| thats not true....
|
| https://www.fpds.gov/ezsearch/search.do?indexName=awardfull&.
| ..
| its-summertime wrote:
| All of those are marked as "PURCHASE ORDER", I don't think
| the PSF applies for those. I don't think they are what one
| would consider funding
| burnerRhodov2 wrote:
| Grants are at the bottom.
| takluyver wrote:
| The grants to the 'University of Georgia Research
| Foundation'?
| burnerRhodov2 wrote:
| rip... You are right. Sorry. I exported it into excel and
| just looked at the column... interesting they have the
| same UEI?
| takluyver wrote:
| It's not a renewal, it's their first application for government
| funding, and they turned it down without accepting the terms.
| This is all quite clear in the blog post.
| pbronez wrote:
| Regardless of how you feel about the specific issues here, it's a
| good example of why public policy works best when it targets one
| issue at a time.
|
| If you want to buy cyber security, just do that. Linking
| cybersecurity payments to social issues reduces how much
| cybersecurity you can get. Sometimes you can find win-win-win
| scenarios. There are values that are worth enforcing as a
| baseline. But you always pay a price somewhere.
|
| Anyway, I signed up to be a PSF member.
| 7jjjjjjj wrote:
| I think people are overlooking the most important part:
|
| - Further, violation of this term gave the NSF the right to "claw
| back" previously approved and transferred funds. This would
| create a situation where money we'd already spent could be taken
| back, which would be an enormous, open-ended financial risk.
|
| They're saying the terms give the Trump administration what's
| essentially a "kill the PSF" button. Which they may want to use
| for any number of arbitrary reasons. Maybe the PSF runs a
| conference with a trans speaker, or someone has to be ousted for
| being openly racist. If it gets the attention of right wing media
| that's the end.
|
| The "just comply with the law" people are being extremely naive.
| There can be no assumption of good faith here.
| XCabbage wrote:
| A point made deep in a comment thread by user "rck" below
| deserves to be a top-level comment - the clawback clause
| explicitly applies ONLY to violations of existing law:
|
| > NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards
| and recover all funds if recipients, during the term of this
| award, operate any program in violation of Federal
| antidiscriminatory laws or engage in a prohibited boycott.
|
| So there's no plausible way that agreeing to these terms would
| have contractually bound PSF in any way that they were not
| already bound by statute. Completely silly ideological posturing
| to turn down the money.
| takluyver wrote:
| And if someone at the NSF decides to terminate the grant &
| 'recover all funds', does the dispute over the contract involve
| the same burden of proof and rights to appeal as a federal
| discrimation case?
|
| Someone wrote it into the grant agreement. It's a fair bet that
| they think that has some effect beyond what the law already
| achieves.
| XCabbage wrote:
| The burden of proof is "on the balance of probabilities" in
| both cases as far as I know, and there's no limit in
| principle on how high a breach of contract case can be
| appealed.
|
| Of course it has an effect, but that effect is giving _the
| NSF_ the ability to sue over a grantee 's alleged breaches of
| discrimination law, instead of that being limited to parties
| discriminated against and the EEOCs.
| burkaman wrote:
| Why was the clause included if it's completely redundant? PSF's
| decision is based on the government's demonstrated track record
| of what they consider to be "illegal DEI", not what the law
| actually says. Grant cancellations have been primarily based on
| a list of banned words (https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/nsf-
| has-canceled-more-1500-...), and of course nobody involved with
| any of the thousands of cancelled grants has been charged with
| breaking a law, because they haven't broken any.
|
| Here's a list of math grants identified by the Senate to be
| DEI-related because they contained strings like "homo" and
| "inequality":
| https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/1ioo2x9/database_of_w...
|
| Here's the actual list of NSF cancelled grants:
| https://www.nsf.gov/updates-on-priorities#termination-list. You
| can also explore the data at https://grant-witness.us/nsf-
| data.html. There are 1667 in there, so I'll just highlight a
| couple and note the "illegal DEI":
|
| - Center for _Integrate_ d Quantum Materials
|
| - CAREER: From Equivariant Chromatic _Homo_ topy Theory to
| Phases of Matter: Voyage to the Edge
|
| - Remote _homo_ logy detection with evolutionary profile HMMs
|
| - SBIR Phase II: Real-time _Community_ -in-the-Loop Platform
| for Improved _Urban_ Flood Forecasting and Management
|
| - RCN: Augmenting Intelligence Through _Collective_ Learning
|
| - Mechanisms for the establishment of _polar_ ity during whole-
| body regeneration
|
| - CAREER: Ecological turnover at the dawn of the Great
| Ordovician Bio _diversification_ Event - quantifying the
| Cambro-Ordovician _trans_ ition through the lens of exceptional
| preservation
|
| When the federal government cancels your grant and claws back
| money you've already spent because they claim something
| innocuous is illegal, knowing in your heart that they're wrong
| is not very helpful.
| XCabbage wrote:
| > Why was the clause included if it's completely redundant?
|
| It's not and I didn't suggest it was. It gives the NSF itself
| the ability to litigate discrimination by grantees (in order
| to claw back its funds) instead of only the people
| discriminated against and the EEOC being able to do that.
| That's a real effect! But it doesn't impose any new
| obligations whatsoever on PSF - just changes the recourse
| mechanism if PSF violates legal obligations they already had.
|
| > When the federal government cancels your grant and claws
| back money you've already spent because they claim something
| innocuous is illegal
|
| As far as I know this has not happened in any of the cases
| you mention and _could_ not happen. Yes, grants have been
| cancelled for dumb reasons, but nothing has been clawed back.
| Right? What would the mechanism for clawing back the money
| without a lawsuit even be?
| burkaman wrote:
| I don't know if they've attempted to claw back any NSF
| grants yet, but they have done this with EPA grants. There
| was no lawsuit, they just ordered banks to freeze the funds
| and the banks complied:
| https://www.eenews.net/articles/epa-green-bank-recipients-
| lo...
| XCabbage wrote:
| Hmm. That'd be pretty nasty to be on the receiving end of
| (and may well have been an outrageous abuse of executive
| power), but still, an administrative freeze is temporary
| and is not in itself a clawback. Even if it was a
| _certainty_ this would happen to PSF, it would still be
| worth it for $1.5 million!
| burkaman wrote:
| It was not temporary. The victims spent substantial
| amounts of money suing and still lost:
| https://www.eenews.net/articles/appeals-court-says-epa-
| can-r.... Technically litigation is ongoing but there is
| no reason to believe they will succeed.
| ggm wrote:
| I would hope another funding source with no interest in this kind
| of legalistic politics emerges. Conditionality like this is going
| to be much more common for another 3 years at least.
|
| Turning down money is the easiest thing in the world, if you have
| the fortitude. I think a lot of organisations don't.
| elicash wrote:
| On the one hand, the plain text of the language is not against
| DEI practices in general -- only DEI practices that are "in
| violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws."
|
| On the other hand, the federal government has gone after law
| firms that are not actually in violation of law and forced
| settlements due to their DEI programs, so you can't actually
| trust that you won't be hassled. Additionally, that you won't at
| minimum have the money clawed back, even if the claims are
| meritless, as the administration has done on Congressionally
| appropriated funds repeatedly as part of DOGE efforts.
| adastra22 wrote:
| The conjunction used is "or". It could mean either.
| elicash wrote:
| My reading in context is different: https://www.governmentcon
| tractorcomplianceupdate.com/2025/08...
| adastra22 wrote:
| That's a different, non-governmental website?
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| Reality: the trump admin has shown that the law doesn't matter
| in the short term. If they think it's "DEI" they'll find a way
| to yank funding/make an example out of an organization agreeing
| to this. Even if they're legally in the wrong.
|
| Years later courts may agree no federal anti discrimination
| laws were violated but it's too late-- the damage has been
| done.
| ModernMech wrote:
| If it's not "DEI" then it's "waste fraud and abuse". And if
| it's not that then it's "terrorism" or "treason".
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| "Anti-semitism" if it involves colleges in any way, don't
| forget that!
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > On the one hand, the plain text of the language is not
| against DEI practices in general -- only DEI practices that are
| "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws."
|
| EO 14151--the policy of which the rewriting of the standard
| anti-discrimination clause in this way is a part of the
| implementation--characterizes DEI _entirely_ as illegal
| discrimination (but the new backformation "discriminatory
| equity ideology" is not found in the EO, that's apparently a
| newer invention to avoid the dissonance of using the actual
| expansion of the initialism while characterizing it as directly
| the opposite of what it is.
| bo1024 wrote:
| Sure, but the executive order is not a law.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The executive order is direction to executive branch
| officials, including the ones who are responsible for
| applying the cancellation and clawback terms in the
| agreement at issue, as to how they are to perform their
| duties.
|
| It is certainly relevsant to evaluating whether or not it
| is worthwhile to apply for the grant. That sufficient
| litigation might reverse an application of the policy in
| the EO that the agreement text clearly highlights the
| intent to enforce as inconsistent with the underlying law
| isn't worth much unless the cost of expected litigation
| would be dwarfed by the size of the contract award, and for
| a $1.5 million grant application, that's...not very much
| litigation.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| You say that confidently like that's an obstacle to
| executive power in 2025.
| AlSweigart wrote:
| Who, in 2025, is still giving the Trump administration the
| benefit of the doubt when it comes to the rule of law?
| gcanyon wrote:
| As I've said in the past: they _need_ the benefit of the
| doubt on everything; they _deserve_ the benefit of the doubt
| on nothing.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Roughly half of the country, give or take.
| daveguy wrote:
| *Roughly 40% of the country, give or take. Don't be
| complacent.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Roughly 40% supports Trump, but they are often quite loud
| about putting other things above the rule of law.
|
| Not sure why you think roughly 50% give him the benefit of
| the doubt on dedication to the rule of law.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The text is:
|
| > we "do not, and will not during the term of this financial
| assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote
| DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal
| anti-discrimination laws."
|
| There's some ambiguity in syntax as to whether or not "in
| violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws" attaches to
| "discriminatory equity ideology" or "any programs that advance
| or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology." Given the
| (improper) comma before the 'or', I'm inclined to lean towards
| an intended interpretation of the former. That is to say, the
| government intends to read the statement as affirming no
| advancement or promotion of DEI, regardless of whether or not
| they violate any US laws.
|
| (The current administration _also_ advances the proposition
| that advancing or promoting DEI itself is a violation of US
| laws, so it 's a rather academic question.)
| ModernMech wrote:
| The best and brightest are not working on these matters.They
| put out work product with misspellings, misstatements,
| outright lies, and ChatGPT hallucinations. We have to assume
| any mistakes are unintentional. Maybe if you're sue the
| mistake gets you off the hook in front of a judge, but you
| should expect to be hassled no matter what the actual text
| says.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > We have to assume any mistakes are unintentional.
|
| I assume they are intentional. The whole point is to make
| society less integrity based and more pay to play based. If
| you're sufficiently influential, then it's a mistake that
| is forgiven. If you aren't, then you suffer the
| consequences.
|
| It's how it works in low trust societies. You haggle for
| everything, from produce to traffic tickets to building
| permits to criminal charges. Everything.
| cls59 wrote:
| Agreed. I think the buried lede here is actually the clawback
| clause. With that in the contract, this isn't a $1.5 million
| dollar grant, it's a $1.5 million dollar liability.
|
| If you take the money and spend it on research and development
| and then get hit by a clawback, whether due to "DEI" or some
| other reason, that is a financially ruinous event to somehow
| come up with $1.5 million dollars that was already spent.
|
| A shame and a waste as it sounds like the project would have
| been beneficial outside of the Python ecosystem, had it been
| funded.
| sho_hn wrote:
| As treasurer of a similar FOSS org, this is the correct take.
|
| An important responsibility of the people running a FOSS
| community's backing non-profit is to keep the org safe and
| stable, as the community relies on it for vital services and
| legal representation. A risk like that is unacceptable, even
| more than in commercial business.
| echelon wrote:
| Could the foundation take the money and sit on it in bonds
| or some other safe instrument? Call it an "endowment"?
|
| $1.5M at 4% is nice.
|
| But I suppose the "proposal" means these funds come with a
| distribution plan attached?
| sho_hn wrote:
| Typically in grant work you submit a complete proposal
| with milestones and roles defined, and receive payout
| over time to cover the costs in the plan, or some part of
| them. It's earmarked money.
|
| In more established non-profit areas there's usually also
| quite some compliance overhead and audits to be passed,
| so this can be someone's fulltime job on the org side.
| FOSS backing orgs are typically smaller and less
| experienced, so donors have so far found ways to make
| things easier for them and give more leeway.
| EbEsacAig wrote:
| > If you take the money and spend it on research and
| development and then get hit by a clawback, whether due to
| "DEI" or some other reason, that is a financially ruinous
| event to somehow come up with $1.5 million dollars that was
| already spent.
|
| This is it. The conditions / circumstances of the clawback
| are irrelevant. If there's _any_ possibility of a clawback,
| then the grant is a rope to hang your organization with.
|
| I don't think an NSF grant should be a _trade_ , wherein your
| org sells its mission / independence, and the NSF buys
| influence.
| kube-system wrote:
| The opinion of the current administration is that DEI is
| illegal, the language is intentionally implying that DEI is
| illegal discrimination, because that is the view they are
| trying to advance. Grants are even being terminated for being
| related to any sort of diversity topic.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Grants are terminated based on keyword matches.
| bcherry wrote:
| they'd have to be extra careful with cpython, it's got a
| lot of include
| rileymat2 wrote:
| > "do not, and will not during the term of this financial
| assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote
| DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal
| anti-discrimination laws."
|
| How does the legalese parse here? Does "violation of Federal
| anti-descrimination laws" apply to the whole thing or just the
| "discriminatory equity ideology" portion of the statement?
|
| I ask, because being in violation of Federal anti-discrimination
| laws would be a problem whether or not you took the money.
| MallocVoidstar wrote:
| I'd assume it parses however the US government wants it to
| parse.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Lawyers wouldn't have as much job security if commas didn't
| matter some of the time
| valiant55 wrote:
| This administration is working very hard to make all
| lawyers redundant. The law doesn't really matter if the
| court is at the beck and call of the President.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Honestly who knows, i wouldn't even trust a lawyer's advice,
| this administration has shown itself to not be a plain dealer
| or trustworthy, and willing to weaponize whatever they want to
| punish whoever they think needs punishing. Past experience of
| what should be legally enforceable or not does not seem very
| reliable at present.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > How does the legalese parse here? Does "violation of Federal
| anti-descrimination laws" apply to the whole thing or just the
| "discriminatory equity ideology" portion of the statement?
|
| "Discriminatory equity ideology" seems intended to be an
| expansion of DEI (its not the normal meaning of that term, but
| the structure would be an odd coincidence if it was intended to
| be an alternative) in which case the sentence _should probably_
| read:
|
| "[...] that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity
| ideology, in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws."
| (note added comma after ideology).
|
| If "DEI" and "discriminatory equity ideology" were intended as
| alternatives, the sentence should probably read:
|
| "[...] that advance or promote DEI or discriminatory equity
| ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws."
| (note removed comma before "or")
|
| In _either_ case, the "in violation of federal anti-
| discrimination law" clearly applies to the whole structure. To
| make it _not_ do so, you'd have to interpret the meaning as
| best expressed by:
|
| "[...] that advance or promote DEI or, in violation of Federal
| anti-discrimination law, discriminatory equity ideology."
|
| That is, that they were intended as alternatives, but also that
| the "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination law" was
| misplaced.
|
| But it really doesn't matter that much how you read it, when
| you recognize that the whole reason it is in there at all is as
| implementaiton of the policy in EO 14151, which characterizes
| DEI (with its normal expansion, not the new one that looks like
| an expansion but could be read as an alternative) as
| categorically a violation of federal anti-discrimination law.
| daveguy wrote:
| It parses however the Trump administration wants it to parse in
| any particular context on any particular day. Their legal moves
| have been a shit-show of incompetence and callous disregard for
| the law.
| ModernMech wrote:
| It kind of doesn't matter, parsing legalese is for when there's
| an active rule of law. We are in a time when POTUS can watch an
| ad he didn't like, and raise taxes on everyone in the country
| over night just because he's pissed off. Do you think it really
| matters what the actual words say? They are there as a stand-in
| for the king's intentions, which may change with some $$$. It's
| not as a serious legal contract. PSF might be just fine taking
| the grant and giving half to Trump personally, but who knows?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yeah, HN tends toward treating law as less dependent on human
| application than it is _under normal circumstances_ ; with
| the current practice drifting away from normal circumstances
| towards " _Quod rex vult, lex fit_ ", that mode of analysis
| becomes far more dangerously misleading.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| At the end of the day it's about making sure any attempt to
| help, acknowledge, or in any way highlight marginalized groups
| is branded as discriminating against the administration's
| preferred (usually but not always their own) demographic. The
| nuances don't really matter to them, the goal is to make sure
| that happens every time. If you're talking about the wrong
| group in a way they deem "bad," they will ruin your life.
|
| After all this whining about cancel culture for years and
| swearing up and down that the government was going to start
| cracking down on free speech, they have weaponized the
| government to do just that in the name of protecting 1A. But
| it's not just conservative cancel culture, it's straight up
| government censorship.
| paulsutter wrote:
| If I'm reading that right, it looks like "do not and will not ...
| operate any programs... in violation of Federal anti-
| discrimination laws"
|
| Did your lawyer say otherwise? Interested to understand
|
| > We were forced to withdraw our application and turn down the
| funding, thanks to new language that was added to the agreement
| requiring us to affirm that we "do not, and will not during the
| term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs
| that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in
| violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws."
|
| > Our legal advisors confirmed that this would not just apply to
| security work covered by the grant - this would apply to all of
| the PSF's activities.
| ihaveajob wrote:
| The core sentence has an OR clause, which means if any of the 2
| conditions happens (DEI promotion; violation of Federal anti-
| discrimination laws), then they're in violation. Their stated
| mission is directly in contradiction with the first part. Even
| if it wasn't, I'd probably vote in the same direction, given
| the (let's call it) volatility we are seeing with capricious
| interpretation of executive privilege.
| nicole_express wrote:
| The current administration has taken, shall we say, a broad
| approach to what they consider "in violation of Federal anti-
| discrimination laws", this clause is suddenly interpreted very
| differently than in past administrations despite the laws in
| question not changing.
|
| Therefore, I can definitely see why the PSF's lawyers
| encouraged giving this clause an extremely wide berth and
| pulling the grant entirely.
| rdtsc wrote:
| Good for them for putting their money where their mouth is and
| standing up for what they believe.
|
| Also, this is a golden opportunity for multi-billion dollar tech
| companies to also do the same and match or double the grant money
| in support of PSF! Google, AWS, Microsoft, anyone?
| nerevarthelame wrote:
| If those tech companies make a habit of funding "pro-DEI"
| organizations, _their_ contracts with the US government could
| be jeoparized.
|
| There's a reason that Google, Amazon, and Microsoft all gave
| Trump money to demolish the East Wing of the White House and
| build a ballroom. And it's not their love of ballroom dancing.
| rdtsc wrote:
| Good points. And I'd say that also falls into the "put the
| money where the mouth is" category. We know where both of
| those things are for them, so we don't have to have any
| illusions or fantasies.
| VagabundoP wrote:
| It is literally quid pro quo right now. you have to play the
| game and I don't blame them as such.
|
| But PSF doing this and not playing the game is really
| awesome. I just hope they can fund themselves through other
| means.
|
| EU should be stepping up more with funding for projects like
| this as a replacement for US tech. Major secure reliable
| funding for open source projects that EU infrastructure can
| be built on would only increase our independence.
| int_19h wrote:
| They don't have to play the game. It would lead to less
| profits, sure. But we're talking about companies already
| sitting on tens of billions of unused cash.
| AlSweigart wrote:
| I mean, it's also just the plain common sense move: accepting
| that money would just be putting a noose around their neck and
| handing the other end to the Trump administration. (And there
| is a 100.0% chance they'll just claw it back eventually
| anyway.)
|
| It's a shame that months of NSF grant-writing work was
| completely wasted though.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > putting a noose around their neck and handing the other end
| to the Trump administration
|
| Pretty much every "negotiation" with the Trump administration
| seems to work that way: An iterated prisoner's-dilemma, where
| any cooperation from you just means they'll betray you even
| harder next time...
| dekhn wrote:
| Take a look at MIT's response to the administration
| regarding the University Compact (https://en.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/Compact_for_Academic_Excellenc...). You can see that
| MIT has an excellent understanding on how to reply. AFAICT
| the administration did not reply furiously (if I missed
| their reply, I woudl appreciate a link to it).
|
| I can also predict the next step here: UT Austin is likely
| to agree to the compact and will be given a huge monetary
| award (although I don't think it's a foregone conclusion-
| they didn't reply within the deadline which suggests that
| they are working behind the scenes on an agreement).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Also, this is a golden opportunity for multi-billion dollar
| tech companies to also do the same and match or double the
| grant money in support of PSF! Google, AWS, Microsoft, anyone?
|
| Doing so publicly would undermine the public efforts of the
| same big tech firms to curry favor from the Trump
| Administration to secure public contracts, regulatory favors,
| etc. (including the very public scrapping of their own DEI
| programs), so I wouldn't expect it or any other positive public
| involvement from them that would be connected to this. They've
| already chosen a side in this fight.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > They've already chosen a side in this fight
|
| Yes they have, this _is_ a time of choosing. So seeing which
| side tech companies have chosen, tech employees can now also
| choose accordingly.
|
| To everyone here who spent the last decade making
| $400k+options at these tech firms that are now funding this
| fascist administration, we see you. You are making a choice
| as to which side you are on.
|
| Remember doing and saying nothing _is_ a choice.
| phlakaton wrote:
| Sorry, I think they're probably all out of funds after chipping
| in for Trump's new royal ballroom.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Somebody probably really wanted a spot in the new bunker
| beneath the ballroom.
| gip wrote:
| DEI has become such a contentious term that we should consider
| retiring it, in my opinion.
| The-Ludwig wrote:
| Bold and right decision!
| godelski wrote:
| > The PSF is a relatively small organization, operating with an
| annual budget of around $5 million per year, with a staff of just
| 14.
|
| This might be the bigger story.
|
| How many _trillions_ of dollars depend on Python?
|
| Yes, I mean trillion. Those market caps didn't skyrocket on
| nothing. A lot of ML systems run on Python. A lot of ML systems
| are first implemented in Python. Even with more complicated
| backends a Python layer is usually available, and used. A whole
| lot of other stuff depends on Python too, but the AI part is
| obvious.
|
| This is the weird part about our (global![0]) economics that I
| just don't get. We'll run billions of dollars in the red for a
| decade or more to get a startup going yet we can't give a million
| to these backbones? Just because they're open source? It's
| insane! If we looked at projects like this as a company we'd call
| their product extremely successful and they'd be able to charge
| out the wazoo for it. So the main difference is what? That it's
| open source? That by being open source it doesn't deserve money?
| I think this is a flaw we probably need to fix. In the very least
| I want those devs paid enough that they don't get enticed by some
| large government entity trying to sneak in backdoors or bugs.
|
| [0] it's not just the US, nor is it just capitalist countries.
| You can point me at grants but let's get honest, $5m is crazy low
| for their importance. They're providing more than 1000x that
| value in return.
|
| [side note] I do know big companies often contribute and will put
| a handful of people on payroll to develop, bug hunt, etc. But
| even if we include that I'm pretty sure the point still stands.
| I'm open to being wrong though, I don't know the actual numbers
|
| [P.S.S] seems to parallel our willingness to fund science.
| Similarly people will cry "but what is the value" from a
| smartphone communicating over the Internet, with the monetary
| value practically hitting them in the face.
| braza wrote:
| > A lot of ML systems run on Python. A lot of ML systems are
| first implemented in Python. > That by being open source it
| doesn't deserve money? I think this is a flaw we probably need
| to fix.
|
| Independent of how one feels about the current US
| administration, I do not think, as a non-American, that a
| particular government should foot the bill for it, but in
| reality I know that no company will do it in good will either.
|
| I've been thinking a lot in terms of financing, but the current
| system of grants, where some agency tied with the executive
| body will approve or reject something, is fundamentally broken,
| as we can see.
|
| In those cases of critical infrastructure, I think it's worth
| some kind of minimum 1:1 deductible of pre-tax programs where
| the foundations can apply, and then they could have their
| financing without being at the whims of some branch of the
| executive.
| godelski wrote:
| > I do not think, as a non-American, that a particular
| government should foot the bill for it
|
| It is definitely a complicated problem but governments tend
| to but good funding agencies for work that uplifts the
| broader society and creates the foundation for new markets.
| That's the idea behind science funding anyways. New science
| might not create a trillion dollar business directly but it
| sure lays the funding for new multi billion dollar companies
| and companies to skyrocket from 500bn to 5T market caps...
|
| But my point is that a project like this is global. I want
| the US putting money in. We're the richest and benefiting the
| most. But I also want other countries putting money in. They
| should have a vested interest too.
|
| I think an interesting mechanism might be to use agencies
| like the NSA. We know their red teams but what about the
| blue? I'd love for the blue teams to get more funding and
| have a goal to find and _patch_ exploits, rather than
| capitalize on them. Obviously should have a firewall between
| the teams. But this should be true for any country. It might
| just be some starting point as it could be a better argument
| for the people that don 't already understand the extreme
| importance of these types of open source projects.
| > I think it's worth some kind of minimum 1:1 deductible of
| pre-tax programs
|
| Typically these projects run as nonprofit foundations.
| They're already getting tax benefits. Though I think we can
| recognize that this isn't enough and isn't remotely
| approaching the value.
|
| It's definitely not an easy problem. Like what do you do? Tax
| big companies (idk, an extra 0.1%?), audit to determine
| dependencies, distribute those taxes accordingly? In theory
| this should be simple and could even be automated, but I'm
| sure in the cat and mouse game the complexity would increase
| incredibly fast.
|
| But hey, it shouldn't just be America. Different countries
| can try different ideas
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Six million is peanuts for guiding probably the most popular
| language on the planet these days
|
| I mean is OSS effective _despite_ the funding problem, or if we
| gave every maintainer a million quid, would they all stop making
| tough decisions ?
|
| I suspect that it's the organisations that define the decision
| quality - but that's just a hunch.
| nsagent wrote:
| do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance
| award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or
| discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-
| discrimination laws.
|
| The government can certainly add restrictions to the use of the
| grant money, but applying that broadly over any actions the
| grantee performs during that time is overreach. I wonder about
| the legality of that condition.
| anon946 wrote:
| Note that many universities still have DEI offices. I believe
| that they are interpreting as described here:
| https://www.governmentcontractorcomplianceupdate.com/2025/08....
| So as long as they can show that they are not doing any of those,
| they seem to believe that they will be okay.
| gcanyon wrote:
| This is what happens when people who take things seriously take
| seriously things said by people who don't take things seriously.
| speakfreely wrote:
| Choosing to advocate your personal political beliefs over the
| interests of your organization should be grounds for dismissal.
| acdha wrote:
| Exactly why they had to do this: the PSF mission statement is
| "to promote, protect, and advance the Python programming
| language, and to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse
| and international community of Python programmers." Letting a
| minority of Americans limit them to the subset of people they
| consider politically correct wouldn't be in keeping with that
| mission.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Bummer about the funding (and for a small org, almost more
| importantly the wasted application work), but all around an
| excellent decision. And a good reference for non-profit backbone.
|
| Time to amp up my Xmas donation.
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| This hurts two things at once: people and security.
|
| Anti-DEI clauses push out under-represented contributors, and the
| lost funding delays protections millions rely on.
|
| Shame on the decision-makers who made that tradeoff.
| 9dev wrote:
| That's by design. The Republican Party explicitly desires an
| America that's white, male, straight, and complacent. Everyone
| else just ruins the picture.
| Kye wrote:
| >> _" Our legal advisors confirmed that this would not just apply
| to security work covered by the grant - this would apply to all
| of the PSF's activities."_
|
| Given this, I could easily see work supporting the creation of
| less biased models being used as an attack vector. They made the
| right call.
| AlSweigart wrote:
| > If we accepted and spent the money despite this term, there was
| a very real risk that the money could be clawed back later. That
| represents an existential risk for the foundation since we would
| have already spent the money!
|
| > I was one of the board members who voted to reject this funding
| - a unanimous but tough decision. I'm proud to serve on a board
| that can make difficult decisions like this.
|
| Kudos to Simon and the rest of the board. Accepting that money
| would be more than a strategic mistake, it'd be an existential
| danger to the PSF itself.
| btown wrote:
| More details on the underlying project that the grant would have
| funded: https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-funding-
| statement.h...
|
| And for those who want to fund the security of one of the few
| remaining independent foundation-led package ecosystems:
|
| https://www.python.org/psf/donations/
|
| https://www.python.org/sponsors/application/
| dang wrote:
| [stub for offtopicness / flamewarness / guideline-breakingness]
|
| (this is a rough cut - I know there are other posts left in the
| thread that arguably belong here, but this time I'm in a bit of a
| rush)
|
| (please, everyone, you can make substantive points thoughtfully
| but do so within the guardrails at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - avoid the
| generic-indignant-flamey-snarky-namecalley-hardcore-battley
| sectors of internet discourse - we're trying for something
| different here and we need everyone to help with that)
| bilekas wrote:
| This seems very un-American. The government dictating how you
| run your business ?
|
| > "do not, and will not during the term of this financial
| assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote
| DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal
| anti-discrimination laws."
|
| Is that even legal to add such an arbitrary and opinionated
| reason to a government grant?
|
| I applaud them for taking a stand, it seems to be more and more
| rare these days.
| __alexs wrote:
| > discriminatory equity ideology
|
| Isn't that when you let your mates buy into your corrupt
| private investment vehicles for cheap?
| lingrush4 wrote:
| I have no idea what point you think you're making, but this
| happens all the time. Do you really think you should be
| obligated to let strangers buy into your private business?
| calmworm wrote:
| And do really think they think that?
| __alexs wrote:
| Ah yeah you're right. What they actually mean is that DEI
| is when you build so many equity preference multiples
| into your term sheets the employee option pool becomes
| entirely worthless.
| bakugo wrote:
| > The government dictating how you run your business ?
|
| Yes, these terms are usually called "laws", you might've
| heard of them.
| dboreham wrote:
| The fascist language is a no-op because it optimizes to:
| "don't violate federal laws" which presumably is reasonable.
| takluyver wrote:
| I would imagine it is much easier to enforce as part of a
| grant agreement that organisations have signed. Especially
| if the law is either not really a law (yet), or it might be
| invalidated by a court on free speech grounds. There's
| probably a reason someone wrote it into the grant
| agreement, and that they're declaring DEI stands for
| something other than the familiar Diversity, Equity &
| Inclusion.
| politician wrote:
| Could you clarify that you're suggesting that "it's un-
| American" for the government to require that the grantee not
| violate any of its anti-discrimination laws?
| mc32 wrote:
| I think people defend anti discrimination or are against it
| depending on how the anti discrimination policy discriminates
| discrimination.
|
| We always discriminate. We have to. But only some
| discrimination is allowed and some are not allowed. The
| difference is what kind of discrimination people feel is fair
| and unfair.
| rectang wrote:
| I agree that humans discriminate inherently, although I
| would argue that what differentiates us is whether we
| struggle against that impulse.
|
| On some level, the idea that we all discriminate has the
| potential to help us move beyond the "racist/not-racist"
| dichotomy. (I prefer the formulation "we all discriminate"
| over the dubious alternative "we're all racist".) But I'm
| not sure it will ever achieve mass acceptance, because it
| activates the human impulse to self-justify.
|
| I dream that one day someone will come up with version of
| this idea that is universally acceptable.
| justin66 wrote:
| I understand what you're driving at but at this stage of the
| game it's quite American.
| ponow wrote:
| Federal funding of research is un-American.
| georgemcbay wrote:
| > Federal funding of research is un-American.
|
| Federal funding of research created the Internet that you
| are posting this idiocy on.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Before you attack the last poster, he does have a point.
| Federal funding of powers that belong to states is
| unamerican.
| ericfr11 wrote:
| I agree. The gvt should not care if DEI is used, or if
| someone is gay or transgender m
| drstewart wrote:
| Oh really? So what pro-DEI requirements did the federal
| funding for that grant require?
| collingreen wrote:
| What does this even mean? Are you trying to imply that
| funding for research that lead to the various tech
| powering the modern internet was done only by
| organizations that never before or since considered
| trying to source candidates from a variety of places
| because they believe different viewpoints have value?
|
| Or are you trying to hang this entire thing on a
| definition of DEI that somehow always and exclusively
| means illegal race or gender based discrimination (I
| assume against white men)?
|
| These conversations are so absurd sometimes. I'm baffled
| by how spitting mad people can decide they are to fight
| these straw men. Then I'm annoyed by (and suspicious of)
| the overwhelming silence from most of these sources when
| it comes to other obvious examples of racial
| discrimination or things like the government trying to
| remove history books that mention slavery.
|
| These things don't look like good faith to me.
| rectang wrote:
| Anti-DEI forces, once in power, turn out not to favor
| putative "diversity of opinion" after all.
| iseletsk wrote:
| No one takes them to jail; companies and organizations can
| run however they want, unless they break laws. It doesn't
| mean that the government that runs and wins on an anti-DEI
| agenda should give them money.
| elgenie wrote:
| Spelling things out helps with the euphemisms.
|
| Anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion forces turn out to be
| (gasp) against all of diversity, and equity, and inclusion.
| zamadatix wrote:
| > "[yadda yadda yadda] in violation of Federal anti-
| discrimination laws."
|
| Should not be a new or surprising statement at all in this
| type of thing, let alone a question of if it's un-American.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Is that even legal to add such an arbitrary and opinionated
| reason to a government grant?
|
| On the surface, it is simply a requirement that the grantee
| comply with existing non-discrimination laws coupled with a
| completely fictional example of a potential violation
| ("discriminatory equity ideology") provided as an example
| that happens to have an initialism collision with a real
| thing. This is legal and ( _but for the propaganda example_ )
| routine.
|
| But... the text viewed in isolation is not the issue.
| AlSweigart wrote:
| Agreed. And it is... quite revealing that many people in
| these comments are _so insistent_ to view the text in
| isolation.
| ksynwa wrote:
| > Is that even legal to
|
| Does it matter for the Trump administration what is legal and
| what isn't?
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| The "in violation of Federal Law" is crucial. You can argue
| it's only there to cover the admin's ass, but Federal Law
| (the actual statues) already prohibits any favoritism or
| discrimination on the basis of skin color etc.
|
| The prior admin made it so that their chosen DEI programs fit
| "Federal Law". This admin has done a complete 180. Courts
| haven't tested any of this yet. It's all a hammer being
| wielded by the side in power.
| pbronez wrote:
| Federal money always has lots of strings attached. The
| specific rules differ by the specific funding vehicle. The
| main vehicle is the Federal Acquisitions Regulation (FAR);
| you can review their rule here:
|
| https://www.acquisition.gov/far/part-52
|
| This is basically the US Federal Government's standard Master
| Services Agreement (MSA).
| bakugo wrote:
| > do not, and will not during the term of this financial
| assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote
| DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal
| anti-discrimination laws.
|
| So basically, the PSF wants to discriminate, the government
| doesn't want them to do so, and that's a problem? Am I reading
| this correctly?
| jLaForest wrote:
| No you are not reading this correctly, but I suspect that was
| willful
| bakugo wrote:
| > No you are not reading this correctly
|
| Okay, so can you help me interpret that correctly, then?
| What other conclusion should I draw from this?
| f33d5173 wrote:
| "Or" means at least one of multiple alternatives.
| Alteratives contrast with each other, they differ. Of
| course, the original author could be repeating the same
| thing for emphasis, but more likely they are saying two
| different things. Since the second thing is
| discrimination, the first thing, "DEI", must necessarily
| not be discrimination. If they merely wanted you to not
| discriminate, they could have just said "follows federal
| anti discrimination laws" which are quite stringent.
| bakugo wrote:
| They are saying the same thing twice. They repeat
| themselves specifically because certain groups hold a
| strong belief that "discrimination" only goes one-way,
| and have effectively twisted the meaning of the word in
| their minds.
|
| The explicit mention of DEI is a way of saying "yes, that
| means ALL kinds of discrimination, including the kinds
| you may believe are morally correct".
| f33d5173 wrote:
| That may be what they mean, but it is a sufficiently
| dubious interpretation that one can't reasonably use it
| to obtain the funding unless clarification is provided by
| the administration.
| gdulli wrote:
| You're free to disagree with anyone here, but playing
| stupid is only a waste of time. It's not a difficult
| topic to understand both sides of, regardless of where
| you come down.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Oh come on.
|
| The language means that if PSF at any point, maybe years from
| now, at some conference or wherever maybe somehow supports or
| hosts a panel about diversity and inclusion, the NSF can
| force them to pay the money back, even though it's already
| spent. That's not "wanting to discriminate", it's a free
| ticket for a rogue government to bully the PSF without a good
| argument, if it ever sees fit.
|
| Even if I were an angry right wing DEI-hater I wouldn't
| accept the grant under these terms. If the government can
| just grab it back whatever under vague accusations, the money
| is just a liability.
| mlinhares wrote:
| Anyone that signs something like this either can't read or
| hired lawyers that can't read.
| takluyver wrote:
| Small correction: the restriction would only affect the PSF
| for the 2 years the grant runs. That's still more than bad
| enough when 'diverse' is in the mission statement, and of
| course they might well apply for other grants, but in
| principle it can't be applied 'at any point'.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Appreciate it. I still wouldn't take the risk tbh, not
| with the current administration's terrible track record
| on stuff like this.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, the PSF doesn't want to expose its finances to special
| risk from the Trump Administration's attempts to paint
| inclusion as discrimination as a pretext for exerting control
| that the law itself does not justify over institutions
| receiving federal funding, finding the risk:reward ratio
| unjustified for a $1.5M grant. (Note that the actual term
| purports to prohibit only what the law already prohibits,
| which is a clue that a naive reading cannot reveal their
| motive, since under a naive reading they would be equally
| risk for the behavior that would violate the terms whether or
| not ot agrees to them or received the grant. So you have to
| look beyond the agreement to the context of the behavior of
| the Trump Administration in regards to the issue addressed in
| the terms and federal funding.)
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| You either think DEI is about taking jobs from white people and
| giving them to undeserving others, or that the deserving are
| spread across different races and genders etc. and we should
| capture that better.
|
| If you're in the former group just man up and say it, don't
| waste our time with the equivocating, "so the government just
| doesn't want people to discriminate and that's a problem???"
| XCabbage wrote:
| Uh, what?
|
| There's no contradiction, or even tension, between these
| three positions:
|
| 1. "DEI is about taking jobs from white people and giving
| them to undeserving others"
|
| 2. "the deserving are spread across different races and
| genders etc. and we should capture that better"
|
| 3. "so the government just doesn't want people to
| discriminate and that's a problem???"
|
| so what exactly are you trying to say?
| ksynwa wrote:
| How is there not a contradiction between 1 and 2? If 1 is
| true then the jobs are offered to non-white candidates who
| are undeserving. If 2 is true then the jobs are offered to
| non-white candidates who are deserving.
| XCabbage wrote:
| I don't understand what you're trying to say. It's
| obviously possible for the extremely weak claim made by
| statement 2 to be true (i.e. for some non-zero number of
| "deserving" nonwhites to exist and for existing hiring to
| not be a perfect meritocracy) in the same universe where
| the sort of programs typically labelled "DEI" tend to
| have anti-meritocratic effects. You seem to be suggesting
| that if competent nonwhites exist, then anything labelled
| DEI will automatically have the effect of causing orgs to
| hire more competent people, but... why? There's zero
| reason that should logically follow.
| faefox wrote:
| God, it is so humiliating to be an American these days. :(
| silexia wrote:
| DEI programs are fundamentally racist. You don't fix racism
| with more racism.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| How do you fix racism?
| flumpcakes wrote:
| I'm not sure that the USA has ever been in such a low standing
| with the rest of the 'democratic world' in the last 100 years.
| That's not saying the rest of the world has their stuff
| together, but it seems that fundamentally un-American ethos is
| the new nationalist American one that a 1/3 of the country
| wants.
|
| What's happening guys?
| munificent wrote:
| About 50 years of slow deliberate destruction of the
| country's trust in institutions and trustworthy media and
| communications systems and culture.
| spankalee wrote:
| This, and most people still don't realize it. It goes back
| to Nixon and Roger Ailes.
| superconduct123 wrote:
| I think people were worn down over many years by
| traditional politicians and just wanted something different
|
| And then someone came in and took advantage of that
| bsder wrote:
| > What's happening guys?
|
| The people who benefited from those who sacrificed for rights
| and equality over the past century got complacent and lazy.
|
| The current rhetoric is _exactly_ the same as was used to
| discriminate against my ancestors 100 years ago. The only
| substitutions are the different slurs. Everyone who wants to
| talks about race and immigrants should be required to listen
| to 8 hours of radio programs from the early 1900s saying the
| exact same thing about them and their ancestors.
|
| "It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights
| become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God
| hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which
| condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence
| of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." -- John
| Philpot Curran, 1790
|
| You fight or you lose. Every time; all the time. Politics is
| a contact sport and you don't get to opt out.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| the original idea of DEI "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" is
| good but it got twisted. it became the rally crying for the
| other side.
| socketcluster wrote:
| Wow. What luxury some people have to reject $1.5 million.
|
| For that kind of money, I would put a large national flag in
| the banner of the socketcluster.io website, I would relocate HQ
| to whatever country and state they want. I would never utter
| the word 'diversity' for the rest of my life and upon receiving
| the money, I would take a screenshot, frame it, put it up on
| the back wall of my new office and I would pray to it every
| morning to give thanks.
| sho_hn wrote:
| > What luxury some people have to reject $1.5 million.
|
| For a non-profit backing a community, an important goal is to
| ensure the long-term sustainability and viability of the org,
| because the community relies on it to keep infra working,
| legal representation in place, and other vital needs.
|
| Accepting those $1.5mio would have come with significant "we
| want that money back" risk, as the post explains. At a $5mio
| annual budget that could seriously destabilize a small org
| like this, from the money shortfall to community unrest.
| Taking this money would be irresponsible.
|
| My two cents, as treasurer of another large FOSS non-profit.
| ghiculescu wrote:
| Reading this you would think the US is the only country in the
| world. Why can't any other country - one that's more politically
| or ideologically aligned - fund the PSF? It seems odd the gripes
| about the US government and its ideologies as if there's no other
| options.
|
| (Not an American.)
| Kye wrote:
| It's a US-based organization discussing funding from the US
| government. Why would you expect a different focus in an
| article about that funding?
| troyvit wrote:
| It's a good point that this is a US-based organization, but I
| don't think the parent is looking for a different focus from
| this post. Rather, they're asking that given Python's
| international influence why aren't organizations from more
| countries (or the countries themselves) contributing? My gut
| feeling is that it's because the PSF isn't looking outside
| the US for those sponsors. Here's their sponsor list btw:
|
| https://www.python.org/psf/sponsors/
| jkelleyrtp wrote:
| In high school, I ran a robotics team that did lots of STEM
| outreach. We went to community centers, after school programs,
| and worked with other similar orgs like "girls who code."
|
| I think we played an important role in the community. In our
| mission we stated we wanted to help bring "equity to STEM
| education."
|
| In 2025, according to the current admin's stance on "DEI," my
| robotics team would not be able to receive grants without risk of
| being sued. It's plainly obvious the line is not drawn at
| restraining "overly progressive policies" - it's just arbitrarily
| placed so the govt can pick and choose the winners based on
| allegiance.
|
| It's a shame that folks with a strong moral fiber are now
| punished for wanting to help their communities.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| You are now viewed as a terrorist according to MAGA doctrine.
| What you did is anti-Trump.
| ashtonshears wrote:
| I appreciate your efforts to support community and people
| th wrote:
| It seems like a number of the "DEI is anti-merit discrimination"
| messages in this thread are overlooking how DEI work usually
| works.
|
| A relevant tweet from 2016
| (https://x.com/jessicamckellar/status/737299461563502595):
|
| > Hello from your @PyCon Diversity Chair. % PyCon talks by women:
| (2011: 1%), (2012: 7%), (2013: 15%), (2014/15: 33%), (2016: 40%).
| #pycon2016
|
| Increased diversity in communities usually comes from active
| outreach work. PyCon's talk selection process starts blinded.
|
| If 300 people submit talks and 294 are men, then 98% of talks
| will likely be from men.
|
| If 500 people submit talks and 394 are men, then ~79% will likely
| be by men.
|
| Outreach to encourage folks to apply/join/run/etc. can make a big
| difference in the makeup of applicants and the makeup of the end
| results. Bucking the trend even during just one year can start a
| snowball effect that moves the needle further in future years.
|
| The world doesn't run on merit. Who you know, whether you've been
| invited in to the club, and whether you feel you belong all
| affect where you end up. So unusually homogenous communities
| (which feel hard for outsiders to break into) can arise even
| without deliberate discrimination.
|
| Organizations like the PSF could choose to say "let's avoid
| outreach work and simply accept the status quo forever", but I
| would much rather see the Python community become more diverse
| and welcoming over time.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| Some predictions on how the current admin is going to probably
| retaliate for the PSF withdrawing their proposal:
|
| * IRS audit into the PSF's 501c3 status
|
| * if the PSF has received federal funds in the past, they'll
| probably be targeted by the DOJ's "Civil Rights Fraud Initiative"
|
| * pressure on corporate sponsors, especially those that are
| federal contractors
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