[HN Gopher] Python Software Foundation gets a donor surge after ...
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Python Software Foundation gets a donor surge after rejecting
federal grant
Author : MilnerRoute
Score : 121 points
Date : 2025-11-09 17:28 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thenewstack.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (thenewstack.io)
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| It wasn't exactly the Streisand effect, but I remember thinking
| the whole flourishing of trans rights and acceptance between 2017
| and 2021 never would have happened if Hillary had won. Is there a
| name for this phenomenon?
|
| Did both parties implicitly understand up until 2017 that going
| too hard too fast is counterproductive?
| themostunique wrote:
| The wall and the egg phenomenon?
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| > Did both parties implicitly understand up until 2017 that
| going too hard too fast is counterproductive?
|
| Of course they did, as they do now, it's game politics 101,
| it's all in the game plan.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >Did both parties implicitly understand up until 2017 that
| going too hard too fast is counterproductive?
|
| Politicians know this, people don't necessarily.
| gm678 wrote:
| I don't think this timeline is quite accurate - the
| 'transgender tipping point' Time magazine cover was in May
| 2014.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_tipping_point
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Disagree.
|
| 2014 was years before it became a mainstream cry to treat
| trans women as cis women. I didn't really hear or notice this
| until the late 2010s.
|
| I also believe the trans community hurt itself and its own
| members by pushing this narrative/falling into this trap,
| though things like the bathroom bill made it inevitable?
|
| Perhaps it's old fashioned, but what I believe is an
| acknowledgement and celebration of differences. What the new
| generation pushed is hiding those differences; by pretending
| there are none.
|
| It's much harder to argue against "let's all agree we're all
| human and make this work".
| jancsika wrote:
| I don't understand the implication of your first sentence.
|
| The NC Bathroom Bill passed in March 2016, and it had an
| immediate flurry of corporate backlash that lasted to the
| partial repeal in 2017. The bill was part of a growing amount
| of anti-trans rhetoric (and legislation) from the Republicans
| starting a few years before. But it was the first bathroom bill
| AFAICT.
|
| Are you saying that the Republicans would have been _less_
| likely to pass that bill under a Clinton presidency? If so,
| what 's the extraordinary evidence for that?
|
| Alternatively, if you are saying they would have been more
| emboldened to pass it, are you suggesting that the backlash
| would have been smaller under a Clinton presidency? That's in
| the realm of possibility, but again what's the evidence here?
| Obama had already shifted to supporting gay marriage before the
| relevant Supreme Court case (probably due to Biden's gaffe of
| pre-emptively announcing his own support for it). So I just
| don't see why you would assume a Clinton presidency would
| effectively muzzle support for trans rights in this case, or
| have any effect whatsoever on the NC Bill and its aftermath.
|
| Edit: clarifications
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| In the brief reading of the article that I had time for, I
| couldn't find the exact reason why the grant was rejected. Does
| anti-DEI automatically mean discrimination? Call me naive, but as
| far as I can see, DEI isn't necessary for a volunteer project.
| Why does it matter how many of a project's contributors are
| transgender?
| viraptor wrote:
| It's not just about transgender people. When you have a tech
| organisation and say "all our members are old white guys...
| maybe there's something that keeps others away from us? let's
| make sure there are no barriers", you're engaging in DEI.
|
| Remember when the government went anti-DEI crazy and started
| covering displays of influential women and people of colour at
| places like NSA? That kind of decision maker may be handling
| the PSF's grant.
| shayway wrote:
| Would everyone agree with that definition, though? It seems
| like discussions around DEI tend to go in circles, because
| proponents see bad implementations as not really DEI, and
| opponents see good implementations as not really DEI either.
|
| I recently read in the local news that some city department,
| in order to comply with anti-DEI stuff, was changing its name
| to remove the word 'diversity'... and nothing else. DEI has
| no legal definition. It feels like the new "woke", where the
| actual meaning is irrelevant, and its only real purpose is
| tribalistic social signalling.
| Shawnj2 wrote:
| By accepting the grant they are giving themselves a legal
| responsibility to "not do DEI" where the government
| arbitrarily decides what DEI is. Even something like
| employing a trans software engineer or talking about the
| impact Python is having in POC communities could be
| considered reason to go after PSF legally or rescind the
| grant. It's just not worth the risk for the reward.
| viraptor wrote:
| Naming things is hard. Yet we deal with lots of other vague
| concepts without losing our minds. There are some extreme
| voices, but somehow I've never heard anyone actually
| digging deeper into the issues to describe dei as just
| tribalistic signalling. When you strip out everything else,
| maybe that's a sign you lost all nuance?
|
| In development we'd just accept it as normal to say
| "Putting each literal value in its own module is not a
| reasonable application of modular design." without claiming
| that the name "modular design" is now misunderstood and
| irrelevant.
| acdha wrote:
| That's really the problem: the grant comes with vague terms
| covering the entire organization, which could be
| arbitrarily redefined at any time in the future. It's like
| signing a contract to deliver a product without any clauses
| protecting you if the client keeps changing their mind.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| > It's not just about transgender people. When you have a
| tech organisation and say "all our members are old white
| guys... maybe there's something that keeps others away from
| us? let's make sure there are no barriers", you're engaging
| in DEI.
|
| I would like to see this kind of thing treated, socially and
| legally, as equivalent to saying "This tech organization has
| a lot of Jews... can we do something about that?" (Indeed,
| many of the exact same people who are classified as white men
| who are disproportionately present in tech organizations by
| DEI advocates are also Ashkenazi or Sephardic Jews, and the
| DEI advocates are treating their white male identity rather
| than their Jewish identity as politically salient). If some
| organization refuses to refrain from treating the
| disproportionate presence of white men in some organization -
| or the _assumed_ disproportionate presence of white men - as
| a problem, I think it 's reasonable for the US federal
| government to refuse to give them grant money.
| hananova wrote:
| You must understand the difference between those two
| statements, I refuse to believe that you do not, so this
| response is more aimed toward people that might not realize
| what you're doing here. There is a vast difference between
| "all" and "a lot of".
|
| To solve the "all" problem, none of those people need to be
| removed from the organization. It merely states that
| diversity is good. To solve the "a lot of" problem
| necessitates getting rid of those members.
|
| This is fundamentally why one is discriminatory and the
| other is not.
| viraptor wrote:
| Yes, once we end up in a situation where majority of
| companies are run by Jews and alternatives are worse, it's
| harder to function in the society as not a Jew, we're
| facing decades long discrimination in different aspects of
| life, and individual action in response to incidents of
| discrimination is not enough... then I sure hope dei will
| concentrate on societal change to help non-Jews.
|
| In the meantime, let's keep to real examples.
| mlindner wrote:
| > It's not just about transgender people. When you have a
| tech organisation and say "all our members are old white
| guys... maybe there's something that keeps others away from
| us? let's make sure there are no barriers", you're engaging
| in DEI.
|
| Yeah and that's obviously problematic, because the common way
| that's implemented is a either a whole lot of strange
| brainwashing courses or active discrimination against "old
| white guys".
| collingreen wrote:
| > the common way that's implemented is a either a whole lot
| of strange brainwashing courses or active discrimination
| against "old white guys"
|
| Are the common, strange brainwashing courses in the room
| right now?
|
| This is obviously a bad faith take - trying to prevent
| anyone from even saying, let alone promoting, diversity
| because sometimes people discriminate (which is already
| illegal) is absurd even without acknowledging that
| discrimination happens already. This argument looks a LOT
| like "keep discriminating against people that aren't like
| me".
|
| Constructive criticism for good faith people out there
| reading this who are concerned about "DEI" causing
| discrimination -- acknowledge all discrimination is bad and
| take a real stab at working on it as a whole. If your only
| "attempt" to prevent discrimination is speaking up against
| people trying to include more diverse sets of people in
| programming communities then you're doing it wrong (and
| showing your ass).
| 8note wrote:
| it the previous hn post, tbe major topic was that the
| government could claw back its money with any flimsey premise,
| about anything the organization does or people related to it
| do, and not specific to the project the grant was for
|
| like, somebody going to a "women in tech" conference could
| result in suddenly having to find millions in cash to pay back
| the government.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Guido has been fairly vocal about mentoring exclusively women
| in Python, because he's of the opinion that they need the help
| much more than men as far as breaking into the industry.
|
| But admitting in public that you are giving preferential
| treatment to anyone other than white men is an instant rage-
| boner for the Trump administration.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| Admitting in public that you are giving preferential
| treatment to white men is an instant rage-boner for most of
| Trump's opponents and also every previous US presidential
| administration and prestigious institution for as long as
| I've been alive. If individuals in their private capacity
| want to do preferential treatment for specific demographic
| categories, they can do so; but I don't want them to get
| government grants that comes out of my taxes for it.
| collingreen wrote:
| Please please please insist your government money stop
| being spent for all the other discrimination going on. I
| don't think python grants should be anywhere near the top
| of that list.
| rstarast wrote:
| > But admitting in public that you are giving preferential
| treatment to anyone other than white men is an instant rage-
| boner for the Trump administration.
|
| And for half the hn readership, it appears
| borntyping wrote:
| The PSF withdrew their application for the grant from the US
| government after being presented with terms that included "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", which conflicts with their mission
| statement: "The mission of the Python Software Foundation 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."
|
| [1]: https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-funding-
| statement.h...
| simonw wrote:
| You might find this video interview with our PSF executive
| director useful to better understand the issue at hand:
| https://youtu.be/Ac3H16pPLNI
| mlindner wrote:
| I've been really sad to see Python's stance on this. It really
| shows that management is out of touch with reality.
| scuff3d wrote:
| God forbid they stand up for people and fight for an inclusive
| work environment. How dare they!
| commandersaki wrote:
| Yeah, after what they did to Tim Peters in recent times, I don't
| see myself donating.
| SandmanDP wrote:
| Can you clarify what you're referring to?
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Good for them. This admin can take their money and go fuck
| themselves.
| jameslk wrote:
| The government shouldn't be spending itself further into
| unsustainable debt. And state funding of private organizations
| will always be subject to the politics of the state, leaking
| those policies into the organizations they fund. Avoiding both is
| a net win for everyone, so this is a great outcome.
| hmmokidk wrote:
| More money to give to Tesla
| acdha wrote:
| Funding supply chain security for one of the most popular open
| source ecosystems in the world isn't even a rounding error on
| the budget.
|
| The debt increases are a political choice: the budget was
| balanced at the turn of the century, which was used as the
| pretext for cutting taxes to a level which ensured the problems
| we're seeing now based on highly unrealistic growth
| projections. Cutting all funding on open source, or science, or
| foreign aid, or even all of those combined is a drop in the
| bucket compared to our cost of healthcare being whole multiples
| higher than in our peer countries.
| jameslk wrote:
| And yet, this organization found a way to grow its funding
| base by avoiding government handouts. It's a net win
| woodruffw wrote:
| I think you've badly misread the numbers here: donors have
| only covered a small fraction of what this NSF grant would
| have covered.
|
| (And of course, it should go without saying that relying on
| the public to _react_ to the government's capricious
| behavior does not make for a stable funding situation for a
| nonprofit.)
| acdha wrote:
| They announced grassroots donations for 10% of the total.
| That's good, but still short of where it should be for
| something so popular.
|
| I think of it like crime or natural disaster: a PyPI
| compromise could easily cause economic damages on the order
| of a bad storm or small terrorist attack. Collectively we
| spend billions trying to mitigate those societally rather
| than telling each person to defend themselves, and this
| feels like the same idea adapted to a different context.
| collingreen wrote:
| Externalizing responsibility while taking the value of
| things and calling that a net win until the consequences
| come up seems short sighted.
|
| Hopefully nobody else funds this critical infrastructure
| piece of both the government and private sector software
| world. Especially someone of a country/color/gender you
| don't like.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Many of the comments here are disappointing. Regardless of your
| opinion of the PSF or its leadership, you should be opposed to
| this kind of clawback threat because it _nakedly_ represents an
| attempt to place a non-profit in a double bind: even attempting
| to comply with these requirements would allow a politicized IRA
| to claim that the PSF is failing to uphold its stated mission.
| jameslk wrote:
| Organizations should avoid funding by the government whenever
| possible. It creates incentives for the organization to align
| with the politics of the government. I am all for this outcome,
| as it's a net win for PSF and any organization that can fund
| itself
| woodruffw wrote:
| Regardless of how you feel about the nature of government
| funding, you should be able to cogitate a strong argument for
| the U.S. government not playing "gotcha" games with its
| funding.
| jameslk wrote:
| Yes, outcomes like these are the best way to avoid
| dependency on a central authority. I'm more for moving away
| from the ability of such authorities to exercise such
| power, rather than hoping they don't abuse it. They
| certainly will eventually
| ok123456 wrote:
| This is exactly what set OpenBSD back in the early 2000s.
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/defense-agency-pulls-
| openbsd-f...
|
| Maybe that $500k that was earmarked for OpenSSL vulnerability
| testing would have found Heartbleed.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| But if they don't get it from the government, they'll get it
| somewhere else, and then that will create incentives for the
| organization to align with the politics of whoever gives them
| the money. There's no escaping the implicit dependence that
| comes with accepting money.
|
| I think we just need to reduce the amount of discretion
| involved in government action of all kinds.
| rullera wrote:
| I wonder is this something all grants have now? edit: yep that
| seems to be the case https://nsf-gov-
| resources.nsf.gov/files/gc1-may25.pdf
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(page generated 2025-11-09 23:00 UTC)