[HN Gopher] Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Found...
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Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation
https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/12/anthropic-invests-in-py...
Author : ayhanfuat
Score : 350 points
Date : 2026-01-13 15:03 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (discuss.python.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (discuss.python.org)
| simianwords wrote:
| Just recently I heard that typed languages are best for agentic
| programming
| reactordev wrote:
| So add mypy to your pre-commit
| simianwords wrote:
| All this but none of the performance benefits.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's true; mypy won't make your Python faster. To get
| something like that, you'd want to use Common LISP and
| SBCL; the SBCL compiler can use type assertions to
| _actually_ throw away code-paths that would verify type
| expectations at runtime (introducing undefined behavior if
| you violate the type assertions).
|
| It's pretty great, because you can run it in debug mode
| where it will assert-fail if your static type assertions
| are violated, or in optimized mode where those checks (and
| the code to support multiple types in a variable) go away
| and instead the program just blows up like a C program with
| a bad cast does.
| reactordev wrote:
| The point about mypy was it does type checking (static
| analysis) for your Python code. Not speeding it up.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| If your code is talking to an LLM, the performance
| difference between rust and python represents < 0.1% of the
| time you spend waiting for computers to do stuff. It's just
| not an important difference.
| simianwords wrote:
| This is clearly not what I'm speaking about - there are
| only a few applications that talk to an LLM.
| reactordev wrote:
| Today...
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| The article is about Anthropic's contribution to Python.
| Pretty much all of their code talks to an LLM.
|
| And just a few comments earlier you said:
|
| > Just recently I heard that typed languages are best for
| agentic programming
|
| Are we not talking about using python (or some
| alternative) to constrain the behavior of agents?
| skeledrew wrote:
| I'd say most of us who prefer Python (a pretty significant
| number given it's the most popular language out there)
| don't care that much about performance, as today's machines
| are pretty fast and the main bottlenecks aren't in the
| language itself anyway. What we care about is
| usability/friendliness so we ourselves can iterate quickly.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| Or ty: https://astral.sh/blog/ty
| reactordev wrote:
| Damn... ok, I'll try it
| danielbln wrote:
| Types are best, period. Whether they are native or hints
| doesn't really matter for the agent, what matters is the
| interface contract they provide.
| simianwords wrote:
| I don't get this argument because if we put the effort to get
| it typed, we don't get one of the best benefits -
| performance.
| maleldil wrote:
| But that's not the argument here. Python type hints allow
| checking correctness statically, which is what matters for
| agents.
| simianwords wrote:
| Yes then you might as well use some other language that
| uses types but also gets you performance. I agree the
| ecosystem is missing but hey we have LLMs now
| solumunus wrote:
| Performance isn't the only important metric. There are
| other pros to weigh. For many apps a language might be
| performant enough, and bring other pros that make it more
| appealing than more performant alternatives.
| wincy wrote:
| That's what makes types easier for me, too, so that makes
| sense.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> Python type hints allow checking correctness
| statically_
|
| Not really. You can do some basic checking, like ensuring
| you don't pass a string into where an integer is
| expected, but your tests required to make sure that
| you're properly dealing with those integers (Python type
| hints aren't nearly capable enough to forgo that) would
| catch that anyway. The LLM doesn't care if the error
| comes from a type checker or test suite.
|
| When you get into real statically typed languages there
| isn't much consideration for Python. Perhaps you can
| prompt an LLM to build you an extractor, but otherwise,
| based on what already exists, your best bet is likely
| Lean extracted to C, imported as a Python module. Easier
| would be to cut Python out of the picture, though.
|
| If you are satisfied with the SMT middle-ground, Dafny
| does support Python as a target. But as the earlier
| commenter said: Types are best.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The best benefit depends on your problem domain.
|
| For a lot of the business world, code flexibility is much
| more important than speed because speed is bottlenecked not
| on the architecture but on the humans in the process; your
| database queries going from two seconds to one second
| matters little if the human with their squishy eyeballs
| takes eight seconds to digest and understand the output
| anyway. But when the business's needs change, you want to
| change the code supporting them _now,_ and types make it
| much easier to do that with confidence you aren 't breaking
| some other piece of the problem domain's current solution
| you weren't thinking about right now (especially if your
| business is supported by a team of dozens to hundreds of
| engineers and they each have their own mental model of how
| it all works).
|
| Besides... Regarding performance, there is a _tiny_ hit to
| performance in Python for including the types (not very
| much at all, having more to do with space efficiency than
| runtime). Not only do most typed languages not suffer
| performance hindrance from typing, the typing actually
| _enables_ their compilation-time performance optimizations.
| A language that knows "this variable is an int and only
| and int and always an int" doesn't need any runtime checks
| to confirm that nobody's trying to squash a string in there
| because the compiler already did that work by verifying
| every read and write of the variable to ensure the rules
| are followed. All that type data is tossed out when the
| final binary gets built.
| lambdaone wrote:
| Python _is_ a typed language. Perhaps you were trying to say
| something different?
| simianwords wrote:
| Is it static or dynamic? Whatever rust is that python isn't.
| lambdaone wrote:
| Python type hints _are_ static - at the moment, they are
| advisory only, but there is an obvious route forward to
| making Python an (optionally) fully statically typed
| language by using static type checking on programs before
| execution.
| _cairn wrote:
| I might be missing the point but isn't this what we use
| mypy et al for today?
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Didn't The Powers That Be(tm) say that was not going to
| happen?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Rust is static. Python is optionally static.
| pantsforbirds wrote:
| They clearly meant a statically typed language. Yes Python is
| Strongly Typed, but I think we all knew what they meant.
| exceptione wrote:
| For any programming really, but I think Python got big due to
| a) the huge influx of beginners into IT, b) lots of intro
| material available in Python and c) having a simple way
| to run your script and get feedback (same as PHP)
|
| I say that as someone urging people to look beyond Python when
| they master the basics of programming.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Python has a terseness that is hard to rival. I think that
| was a major selling point: its constructs and use of
| whitespace mean that a valid Python program looks pretty
| close to the pseudo-code one might write to reason out the
| problem before writing it in another language.
| exceptione wrote:
| I doubt that this is the selling point. Imho it is nothing
| special compared to Haskell, F# and the likes.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Python doesn't require you to understand monads to write
| useful Python.
|
| To be clear: Haskell is great, but its entire vibe (lazy
| evaluation, pure functions) is entirely different from
| what Python's about. Someone who knows C++ or Java has a
| much bigger gap to jump to pick up Haskell than to pick
| up Python.
| skeledrew wrote:
| It's a huge selling point for me and many I know who
| knows it. Nothing like code that you can read like you're
| reading a book/article.
| pansa2 wrote:
| AFAICT Python basically _is_ a [statically-]typed language
| nowadays. Most people are using MyPy or an alternative
| typechecker, and the community frowns on those who aren't.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's a pretty nice best-of-both-worlds arrangement. The type
| information is there, but the program still runs without it
| (unless one is doing something really fancy, since it does
| actually make a runtime construct that can be introspected;
| some ORMs use the static type data to figure out database-to-
| object bindings). So you can go without types for
| prototyping, and then when you're happy with your prototype
| you can let mypy beat you up until the types are sound. There
| is a small nonzero cost to using the types at runtime (since
| they do create metadata that doesn't get dropped like in most
| languages with a static compilation step, like C++ or
| TypeScript).
|
| I can name an absolute handful of languages I've used that
| have that flexibility. Common LISP comes to mind. But in
| general you get one or the other option.
| pansa2 wrote:
| > _It 's a pretty nice best-of-both-worlds arrangement_
|
| It's also a worst-of-both-worlds arrangement, in that you
| have to do the extra work to satisfy the type checker but
| don't get the benefits of a compiled language in terms of
| performance and ease-of-deployment, and only partial
| benefits in terms of correctness (because the type system
| is unsound).
|
| AFAIK the Dart team felt this way about optional typing in
| Dart 1.x, which is why they changed to sound static typing
| for Dart 2.
| 9rx wrote:
| Without dependent typing, it's the worst of all worlds
| anyway. You have to express types, but they aren't
| expressive enough to not have to also express the same in
| tests, leaving this weird place where you have to repeat
| yourself over and over.
|
| That was an okay tradeoff for humans writing code as it
| enables things like the squiggly line as you type for
| basic mistakes, automatic refactoring, etc. But that
| stuff makes no difference to LLMs.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Most people are using MyPy or an alternative typechecker,
| and the community frowns on those who aren't.
|
| That's not like a widespread/by-default/de-facto standard
| across the ecosystem, by a wide margin. Browse
| popular/trending Python repositories and GitHub sometime and
| I guess you can see.
|
| Most of the AI stuff released is still basically using conda
| or pip for dependencies, more times than not, they don't even
| share/say what Python version they used. It's basically still
| the wild west out there.
|
| Never had anyone "frown" towards me for not using MyPy or any
| typechecker either, although I get plenty of that from TS
| fans when I refuse to adopt TS.
| pansa2 wrote:
| > _Never had anyone "frown" towards me for not using MyPy
| or any typechecker either_
|
| I've seen it many times. Here's one of the more extreme
| examples, a highly-upvoted comment that describes not using
| type hints as "catastrophically unprofessional":
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1iqytkf/python_typ
| e...
| embedding-shape wrote:
| But yeah, that's reddit, people/bots rejoice over
| anything being cargoculted there, and you really can't
| take any upvote/downvote numbers on reddit seriously,
| it's all manipulated today.
|
| Don't read stuff on reddit and use whatever you've
| "learned" there elsewhere, because it's basically run by
| moderators who try to profit of their communities these
| days, hardly any humans left on the subreddits.
|
| Edit: I really can't stress this enough, don't use
| upvotes/likes/stars/whatever as an indicator that a
| person on the internet is right and has a good point,
| especially not on reddit but I would advice people to not
| do so on HN either, or any other place. But again,
| especially on reddit, the upvotes literally count for
| nothing. Don't pick up advice based on upvoted comments
| on reddit!
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I think in the case of TS, it's more that JavaScript itself
| is notoriously trash (I'm not being subjective; see
| https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat), and
| TypeScript helps paper over like 90% of the holes in
| JavaScript.
|
| Python typed or untyped feels like a taste / flexibility /
| prototyping tradeoff; TypeScript vs. JavaScript feels like
| "Do you want to get work done or do you want to wrap barbed
| wire around your ankle and pull?" And I say this as someone
| who will happily grab JS sometimes (for <1,000 LOC projects
| that I don't plan to maintain indefinitely or share with
| other people).
|
| Plus, TypeScript isn't a _strict_ superset of JavaScript,
| so choice at the beginning matters; if you start in JS and
| decide to use TS later, you 're going to have to _port_
| your code.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Typed Python vs untyped Python is literally the same as
| TS vs JS, don't let others fool you into thinking somehow
| it's different.
|
| > TypeScript helps paper over like 90% of the holes in
| JavaScript
|
| Always kind of baffles me when people say this, how are
| you actually programming where 90% of the errors/bugs you
| have are related to types and other things TS addresses?
| I must be doing something very different when writing JS
| because while those things happen sometime (once or twice
| a year maybe?), 90% of the issues I have while
| programming are domain/logic bugs, and wouldn't be solved
| by TS in any way.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I mean, I'm one of the fools who would fool you into
| thinking it's different, since I use all four languages.
| ;)
|
| I can just skip the mypy run if I want to do untyped
| Python. I can't skip adding types if I'm writing
| TypeScript in most contexts; it's not valid TypeScript
| syntax. Conversely, I can't add types to JavaScript; it's
| not valid JavaScript syntax (jsdoc tags and running a
| static checker over that being a different subject, and
| more akin to the Python situation).
|
| > how are you actually programming where 90% of the
| errors/bugs you have are related to types and other
| things TS addresses
|
| It's the things in the "wat" video. JavaScript, in
| general, errs on the side of giving you _some_ answer
| when you try and do something very unusual with types
| (like add a boolean to a number or a string to an array)
| over taking a runtime error. TypeScript will fail to
| typecheck in most of the places where those operations
| are _techincally_ correct but surprising as hell in the
| wrong way unless you explicitly coerce the types to match
| up.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Generally you only get frowned at if you're not using type
| hints while contributing to a project whose coding
| standards say "we use type hints here."
|
| If you're working on a project that doesn't use type hints,
| there's also plenty of frowning, but that's just because
| coding without a type checker is kind of painful.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Generally you only get frowned at if you're not using
| type hints while contributing to a project whose coding
| standards say "we use type hints here."
|
| Yeah, that obviously makes sense, not following the code
| guidelines of a project _should be_ frowned upon.
| desireco42 wrote:
| Why is this getting downvoted... it is true. Also it is true
| that dynamic languages (like Ruby ;) and Python) are more
| efficient with tokens, like significantly then types like C,
| C++ or such. But Javascript and Typescript are using twice the
| tokens of Ruby for example and Clojure is even more efficient,
| obviosly I would add.
| minimaxir wrote:
| It's not incorrect, but in the context of the given Hacker
| News submission it reads as "why fund Python at all?"
| oefrha wrote:
| Just recently I heard that they can donate to "typed languages"
| too, a donation to one language does't preclude other
| donations, and given their cash injections they have a few
| $1.5m's to spare.
| dude250711 wrote:
| For vibe code, since it's not important whether the output
| works, JavaScript is even better.
| senko wrote:
| Source: https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/12/anthropic-invests-
| in-py...
| dang wrote:
| Link added above. Thanks!
| hdjdndndba wrote:
| This makes sense given how much of the current AI ecosystem is
| built on top of Python. I hope this helps the foundation improve
| security for everyone who relies on these libraries.
| bbor wrote:
| For anyone who isn't aware/remembering, this is certainly made
| with the security of PyPi in mind, python's main package
| repository.
|
| NPM is the other major source of issues (congrats for now,
| `cargo`!), and TIL that NPM is A) a for-profit startup (??) and
| B) acquired by Microsoft (????). In that light, this gift seems
| even more important, as it may help ensure that relative
| funding differences going forward don't make PyPi an outsized
| target!
|
| (Also makes me wonder if they still have a Microsoft employee
| running the PSF... always thought that was odd.)
|
| AFAIU the actual PSF development team is pretty small and
| focused on CPython (aka language internals), so I'm curious how
| $750,000/year changes that in the short term...
|
| EDIT: there's a link below with a ton more info. This gift
| augments existing gifts from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and
| Citi, and they soft-commit to a cause: Planned
| projects include creating new tools for automated proactive
| review of all packages uploaded to PyPI, improving on the
| current process of reactive-only review. We intend to create a
| new dataset of known malware that will allow us to design these
| novel tools, relying on capability analysis.
| simonw wrote:
| > (Also makes me wonder if they still have a Microsoft
| employee running the PSF... always thought that was odd.)
|
| You might be confusing the Python Steering Council -
| responsible for leadership of Python language development -
| with the PSF non-profit there.
|
| The PSF is lead by a full-time executive director who has no
| other affiliation, plus an elected board of unpaid volunteer
| directors (I'm one of them).
|
| Microsoft employees occasionally get voted into the board,
| but there is a rule to make sure a single company doesn't
| have more than 2 representatives on the board at any one
| time,
|
| The board also elects a chair/president - previously that was
| Dawn Wages who worked at Microsoft for part of that time
| (until March 2025 - Dawn was chair up to October), today it's
| Jannis Leidel from Anaconda.
|
| Meanwhile the Python steering council is entirely separate
| from the PSF leadership, with their own election mechanism
| voted on by Python core contributors. They have five members,
| none of whom currently work for Microsoft (but there have
| been Microsoft employees in the past.)
| bbor wrote:
| Wow, I didn't know you got a spot on the board, that's a
| great choice on their part! Thanks for giving your time.
|
| Yes, I was talking about Wages -- the day-to-day is surely
| complex, but I'm sure you'd agree that the president of the
| board is ultimately "above" the chief executive if push
| ever came to shove, at least on paper. I will grant that I
| used "running", which is quite unclear in hindsight!
| "Responsible for" or "leading" seems more accurate.
|
| She seemed great as policymaker and person, but when I last
| checked her job was literally to be Microsoft's Python
| community liason, and that just struck me as... dangerous?
| On the nose? Giving the reigns to someone from a for-
| profit, $1.5B corporation whose entire business depends
| directly upon the PSF's work also seems like an odd choice.
| Again, I'm sure they're great as an individual, and during
| normal operations there's no competing interests so it's
| fine. It's just...
|
| I guess I just have a vision for the non-profit org guiding
| the world's most popular programming language that doesn't
| really mesh with the reality of open source funding as it
| exists today, at the end of the day; the "no 2
| representatives from the same company" rule seems like a
| comforting sign that they(/y'all!) share that general
| philosophy despite the circumstances.
| jacobian wrote:
| > I'm sure you'd agree that the president of the board is
| ultimately "above" the chief executive if push ever came
| to shove, at least on paper.
|
| That is not true of the PSF, nor of many (most?) other US
| nonprofits. Not on paper, and not practically speaking.
| The director reports to the _board_ , but officers have
| little to no unitary power. You can go read the PSF's
| bylaws if you like, and if you do you'll see that
| officers, including the president, can do very little
| without a board vote. And because of aforementioned
| policy, that's a max of two votes from people employed by
| a single company.
|
| Also, like, do you know anything about Dawn? She's been
| serving the Python community waaaay longer than she's
| worked for Microsoft. Questioning her ethics based on
| absolutely nothing is unfounded and, honestly, pretty
| fucked up.
|
| There's this pernicious lie that Microsoft is somehow
| controlling the PSF. It's based on about as much evidence
| as there is for Flat Earth, yet here it is again. At
| best, repeating this lie reflects profound ignorance
| about how the PSF actually functions; at worst it seems
| like some kind of weird disinfo campaign against one of
| the most important nonprofits in open source.
| webology wrote:
| Nodding along with everything you wrote here, but one
| minor point for anyone who might read the bylaws and get
| confused. https://www.python.org/psf/bylaws/
|
| > Section 5.15. Limits on Co-affiliation of Board
| Members. No more than one quarter (1/4) of the members of
| the Board of Directors may share a common affiliation as
| defined in Section 5.14.
|
| The PSF allows three board members to share an
| affiliation, 13 seats * 0.25 ~= 3.25.
|
| BTH, that's one too many, and I helped write/recommend
| the original language. When I was on the board, three
| felt like too many, even though everyone was wonderful,
| and it was Google, not Microsoft, that hit the limit.
|
| The DSF (Django Software Foundation) recently adopted a
| two-person limit, which I recommend more boards consider.
| simonw wrote:
| Us board members voted to put Dawn in that position.
|
| The position doesn't have much additional power at all -
| the chair spends a little more time with the executive
| director and gets to set the agenda for the board
| meetings, but board actions still require a vote from the
| board.
|
| If we felt like an employee of a specific company was
| abusing their position on the PSF board we would take
| steps to address that. Thankfully I've seen no evidence
| of that from anyone during my time on the board.
|
| If anything it's the opposite: board members are very
| good about abstaining from votes that their employer
| might have an interest in.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Microsoft was serious about supporting Python as far back as
| 2006, because IronPython was a real effort in Redmond. (I'm
| wondering how they think of it now.)
| oceansky wrote:
| Very good for my career too as someone with plenty python
| experience
| zoobab wrote:
| I did not know you could make donations with a string attached
| ("improve security")...
| epistasis wrote:
| The vast majority of donations to, say, universities are made
| with a specific purpose, and that happens with a lot of non-
| profits too. The recipient doesn't have to accept the donation,
| of course, but if they do they track exactly how it was spent.
| frankwiles wrote:
| It's super common with non-profits. Obviously they would prefer
| no strings attached but some light strings are usually not a
| problem for most non-profits.
| bbor wrote:
| And they come in a variety of bindingness. I didn't notice
| any details in this link which makes me think this is mostly
| a handshake deal, but it wouldn't be at all unusual for there
| to be some auditing mechanisms on a quarterly/yearly cycle.
|
| For example, Wikimedia just recently claimed that they can't
| chase some political project that critics wanted them to
| because most of their funds are earmarked-for/invested-in
| specific projects. So it does happen with US-based tech non-
| profits to at least some extent.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Of course you can. The vast majority of donations of this
| magnitude come with strings attached, be it how the money is
| spent, access to leadership/events, etc
| ssutch3 wrote:
| Yes, and at least the strings they attached are productive
| palatable unlike some other organizations:
| https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-funding-statement.h...
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| That link shows the significance of this Anthropic donation
| too:
|
| > $1.5 million over two years would have been quite a lot of
| money for us, and easily the largest grant we'd ever
| received.
| larkost wrote:
| My wife's previous job was as an accountant with the endowment
| foundation at a mid-sized public university (San Jose State
| University). A lot of her time was spent making sure that the
| spending from the endowments many different funds corresponded
| to the rules that the donors had given when donating that
| money. Much of that was working with groups to shift spending
| around between accounts when they invariably made "mistakes".
|
| One of her biggest projects was shepherding a large group of
| very old donations through a legal process to remove provisions
| in the donation agreements that were now illegal. In these
| cases the donors were long deceased, and the most common rule
| that needed to be changed was targeting race or ethnicity
| (e.g.: funds setup to help black people, or Irish, etc...).
|
| The sheer number of different variations on "donor intent", or
| even just the wording on that legal document was astounding.
| There was always a tension between my wife's group and the
| group that was bringing in the money ("stewardship"), her group
| wanted things to be simpler and the "stewarding" group wanted
| nothing to get in the way of donations. It was remarkably
| similar to the tensions between sales and engineering in many
| software firms.
| Loren-PSF wrote:
| Hello! PSF staffer/author of the linked post here. To be
| explicit, the Anthropic donation is actually "no strings
| attached," or in non-profit parlance "unrestricted," but with a
| handshake agreement that they hope to improve security with
| this sponsorship. So the gift will enable us to do security
| work we've wanted to do and it is our intention to do that, but
| Anthropic didn't formally earmark the money, which gives us a
| great deal more flexibility plus a lower accounting burden, and
| I'm personally very grateful for that.
| htrp wrote:
| Looking at you Deepmind and OpenAI
| surajrmal wrote:
| Google sponsors the python foundation as per this page:
| https://www.python.org/psf/sponsors/
| godelski wrote:
| Kinda crazy that the top level "Visionary Sponsor" is a
| donation level of $160k. There's also 0 sponsors at the $100k
| level. I was also surprised to see Netflix at $5k and Jane
| Street at $17k. Maybe they should give more but there's a lot
| of names absent and that says more
| neom wrote:
| Seems like a good time to throw out a reminder regarding "Roads
| and Bridges: The Unseen Labor Behind Our Digital Infrastructure"
| by Nadia Asparouhova. While she may have published it in 2016,
| it's still relevant today and speaks to the need for the private
| sector generally (looking at you VC firms) to support and
| understand the open source work, hours of unfunded labor,
| powering our societies.
|
| https://www.fordfoundation.org/learning/library/research-rep...
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| Big Tech should really be footing the bill here as well as
| large established VC firms.
| ajross wrote:
| To a large extent they do and always have. It's not as broad
| or fair as it should be[1], but for almost any economically
| important project all the major contributors and maintainers
| are on the payroll of one of the big tech interests or a
| foundation funded by them.
|
| The hippies writing that software may not be compensated at
| the level you'd expect given the value they provide, but
| they'll never go hungry.
|
| [1] LLVM and Linux get more cash than they can spend. GNU
| stuff is comparatively impoverished because everyone assumes
| they'd do it for free anyway. Stuff that ships on a Canonical
| desktop or RHEL default install gets lots of cash but
| community favorites like KDE need to make their own way,
| etc... Also just to be clear: _node is filled with
| povertyware and you should be extremely careful what you grab
| from npm_.
| Foxboron wrote:
| > but for almost any economically important project all the
| major contributors and maintainers are on the payroll of
| one of the big tech interests or a foundation funded by
| them.
|
| "almost" is the load bearing word here, and/or a weasel
| word. Define what an "economically important project" is.
|
| > Also just to be clear: node is filled with povertyware
| and you should be extremely careful what you grab from npm.
|
| Is "povertyware" what we call software written by people
| and released for free now?
| ajross wrote:
| > "almost" is the load bearing word here, and/or a weasel
| word. Define what an "economically important project" is.
|
| Linux, clang, python, react, blink, v8, openssl... You
| know what I mean. I stand by what I said. Do you have a
| counterexample you think is clearly unfunded? They
| exist[1], but they're rare.
|
| > Is "povertyware" what we call software written by
| people and released for free now?
|
| It's software subject to economic coercion owing to the
| lack of means of its maintainership. It's 100% fine for
| you to write and release software for free, but if a
| third party bets their own product on it they're subject
| to an attack where I hand you $7M to look the other way
| while I borrow your shell.
|
| [1] The xz-utils attack is the flag bearer for this kind
| of messup, obviously.
| Foxboron wrote:
| > Linux, clang, python, react, blink, v8, openssl... You
| know what I mean. I stand by what I said. Do you have a
| counterexample you think is clearly unfunded? They
| exist[1], but they're rare.
|
| For Linux "all the major contributors and maintainers are
| on the payroll of one of the big tech interests or a
| foundation funded by them" is simply not true. It's
| trivial to prove this by just looking at the maintainers
| of the subsystems. Making this claim is nonsense to begin
| with.
|
| Same is true for several major contributors to the Python
| compiler and subsequent libraries as well.
|
| You will move the goalpost by trying to narrow down what
| "major contributor" means.
|
| > It's software subject to economic coercion owing to the
| lack of means of its maintainership. It's 100% fine for
| you to write and release software for free, but if a
| third party bets their own product on it they're subject
| to an attack where I hand you $7M to look the other way
| while I borrow your shell.
|
| So without knowing anyone you are making a value
| judgement on the (probable?) lack of ethics? Excuse me?
| ajross wrote:
| > You will move the goalpost
|
| I can't move the goalpost if you won't produce a ball.
| Who exactly are you thinking of that needs a job but
| doesn't have one?
| Foxboron wrote:
| > Who exactly are you thinking of that needs a job but
| doesn't have one?
|
| That is not your claim. Your claim is that they "are on
| the payroll of one of the big tech interests or a
| foundation funded by them". Which is simply not true.
|
| You can _easily_ find several maintainers of these
| projects doing this as their part-time hobby project,
| have cut a deal at work or simply don 't work at place
| that funds Linux development.
|
| I'm not going to call out individual I know the situation
| and/or their employment history.
| cudder wrote:
| Unfunded is kind of a stretch, but at least libxml2.
|
| Essentially "povertyware" as you call it when you
| consider the trillion dollar companies built on top of
| them? Now that's way easier: SQLite, PostgreSQL, ffmpeg,
| imagemagick, numpy, pandas, GTK, curl, zlib, libpng,
| zxing or any other popular qr/barcode library, etc...
| embedding-shape wrote:
| What is a "economically important project"? A company that
| makes a lot of money?
| kolbe wrote:
| > LLVM and Linux get more cash than they can spend. GNU
| stuff is comparatively impoverished because everyone
| assumes they'd do it for free anyway. Stuff that ships on a
| Canonical desktop or RHEL default install gets lots of cash
| but community favorites like KDE need to make their own
| way, etc... Also just to be clear: node is filled with
| povertyware and you should be extremely careful what you
| grab from npm.
|
| This is often the problem with charity in general. It's
| hard to find good organizations that actually need your
| money. Great ones self-sustain on their own revenue. Good
| ones are saturated with donations from their own users.
| There's just a small sliver of projects that are awesome,
| and could productively use financial support. From personal
| experience, identifying these is often far more costly than
| the act of writing a check.
| alain94040 wrote:
| Really simple fix: social pressure and expectations should be
| that every company that uses open source pays a fixed amount
| of their revenue (is 0.1% low enough to be negligible for the
| companies). Companies that don't should shunned.
| n8m8 wrote:
| They won't even attempt to read ToS, you think they'll shun
| companies?
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| The problem is, people who make that decision can either
| spend 0.1% to support open source and get return on
| investment in terms of better business performance in 2-3
| business years. Or they could pay themselves 0.1% in
| bonuses right now and get an immediate return.
| jszymborski wrote:
| How about we skip the social pressure and levy a tax on
| them that is used to shore up a sovereign fund for OSS.
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| *by Nadia _Eghbal_
|
| EDIT: or are you rather thinking about the book _Working in
| Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software_?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Actually, since 2022, Nadia Asparouhova :)
|
| From a 2022 email:
|
| > (P.S. I have a new last name! Still transitioning
| everything over, but I'm now Nadia Asparouhova.)
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| That clears things up, thanks!
|
| Here the website of the author: https://nadia.xyz/
| twoquestions wrote:
| Glad to see Anthropic continuing to invest in the longevity and
| quality of their open-source dependencies!
|
| If you missed it, they bought Bun a while back, which is what
| Claude Code is built in: https://bun.sh/blog/bun-joins-anthropic
| geodel wrote:
| Wow. Just came to know from your comment. Not sure if it was
| covered here on HN. I totally missed it.
| qaq wrote:
| Still crazy how little investment goes to Python given how
| critical it is to the ecosystem.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Poor management has played a role. They refused to invest in
| packaging to the extent that a separate company (astral) had to
| do it for them. Bugs closed for years with the excuse "we're
| only volunteers." Meanwhile, "outreach" was funded for several
| million a year. Not confidence inspiring. Maybe would have
| improved if the funds had been spent more appropriately.
|
| Similar story with Mozilla.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I don't know much about the Linux Foundation if I'm being
| honest, even though I've been a 24/7 Linux user for decades,
| but they seemingly don't have the same image in the
| ecosystem, at least not close to how people see Mozilla
| today.
|
| Why is that? Is there lessons to be learned from the Linux
| Foundation how to actually effectively and responsibly manage
| that sort of money, in those types of projects?
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| A foundation should invest in its technology first and
| resist the strong temptation to fund pet projects (of
| leadership) with donated money.
| nedbat wrote:
| I'm not sure what you are labeling as pet projects of
| leadership? Is there something the PSF is doing that you
| consider a pet project rather than part of their core
| mission?
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Yes, outreach before investing in packaging. It's not
| that outreach is bad but that packaging was crumbling.
| nedbat wrote:
| I'm not sure how you got to "before" here. The PSF runs
| PyPI, organizes the Python Packaging Authority, supports
| sprints and standardization efforts, funds developers in
| residence and so on. Packaging is improving, partly
| because of those efforts. It's not an either/or.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| https://devclass.com/2025/03/10/pypi-repository-takes-
| steps-... > CPython core developer Paul
| Moore described his involvement in the >
| packaging community and said: "it's struggling under the
| weight of its own > popularity ... the
| individuals involved are doing their best under what are
| > frankly near-impossible conditions." >
| Moore questioned whether the fact that so many businesses
| now depend on > Python and PyPI meant that "maybe
| a purely volunteer basis simply can't > work any
| more," though he hoped this is not the case.
| nedbat wrote:
| Yes, it could use more funding. Glad to see that
| Anthropic is helping. It's still not an either/or
| situation. The PSF would not be fulfilling their mission
| if they only funded packaging until packaging was
| "solved" (whatever that might mean) and only then did
| they fund outreach.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I didn't say either/or, and was talking about priorities.
| One shouldn't install a fancy roof when the foundation is
| crumbling.
|
| > The PSF would not be fulfilling their mission if they
| only funded packaging until packaging was "solved"
| (whatever that might mean) and only then did they fund
| outreach.
|
| They did the opposite. So they still didn't fulfill it,
| to the extent that Mozilla, ChanZuck, and astral felt
| compelled to step in.
| upboundspiral wrote:
| The Linux foundation is not a nonprofit. It is registered
| as a 501c6, basically a business consortium, unlike the
| Python software foundation which is a nonprofit (501c3).
|
| The Linux foundation also stewards way more foundations and
| projects that just "Linux". They are, among other things,
| in the business of creating foundations and making money
| that way. For every organization under the Linux
| foundation, say the CNCF, to be a part of those
| subprojects, you need to pay a Linux foundation tax.
|
| The Python Software foundation I don't know much about but
| their scope seems to be only stewarding python. They seem
| to have far less corporate outreach then the Linux
| foundation.
|
| Linux Foundation 990 - note page 16-17 with the salaries -
| there are for profit entity salaries, not nonprofit
| salaries.
|
| https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/460503801_201812_990
| O...
| teh64 wrote:
| Where are you getting these numbers? Looking at the PSFs
| Report for 2024 [0], 50% of their expenses went to pycon.
| Would you consider that outreach? I believe conferences are
| very important as part of the health of a language, and
| reading the definition of outreach[1], I would not classify
| the conference as that. The second highest amount of expenses
| (27.1%) went to (surprise!) "Packaging Work
| Group/Infrastructure/Other", i.e. pypi, pip etc... "Outreach
| & Education" was only 2.8% of 12.9% of expenses, i.e.
| 0.3612%, which is $17846 (actual dollars, not thousands like
| in the report.)
|
| [0] https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2024/ [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outreach
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| The assertions above are my memory from pre-covid, I'd look
| at 2019 and before perhaps. Many things changed after that
| (and council too) but it takes a while to change
| perception.
| teh64 wrote:
| In 2019 [0] they only had 2.5 million of total expenses,
| of which 75% was pycon. So even if everything else was on
| "outreach" (it was not), that would only be $642,500,
| which is not "several million a year".
|
| In 2020 [1] 48.1% went to "Packaging Work
| Group/Infrastructure/Other" (I assume because in person
| pycon was canceled).
|
| I also checked 2021 [2], which was 32.7% pycon and 31.2%
| pip etc...
|
| Also 2022 [3], 57.8% pycon, 26.6% Packaging Work Group...
|
| In 2023 [4], 60.5% pycon, and Packaging Work Group
| expenses decreased to 9.6% because of fastly now provides
| the bandwidth/hosting: "We are grateful to Fastly for
| making the online services that the PSF provides
| possible, so that we can invest time and resources into
| advancing our infrastructure to better meet community
| wants and needs."
|
| So your assertion seems to have never been true.
|
| [0] https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2019/
|
| [1] https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2020/
|
| [2] https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2021/
|
| [3] https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2022/
|
| [4] https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2023/
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| As mentioned covid changed everything, so please stop
| pulling figures from that once in a lifetime event.
| teh64 wrote:
| I have looked at 2018-2016, where the expenses are almost
| completely the main pycon and more local pycons. Also
| sponserships like "Pallets group, which maintains
| projects such as Flask and Jinja" (2018). Everything
| other than the main pycon is less than 1 million dollars
| combined in expenses.
|
| I feel it is important to look at the facts, not just
| vibes.
| nedbat wrote:
| > Also sponserships like "Pallets group ...
|
| Those are "fiscal sponsorships" meaning the PSF holds
| money for other organizations. The PSF is not funding
| Pallets (or Boston Python or North Bay Python, etc, etc).
| They accept money earmarked for those organizations and
| provide administrative support. Details:
| https://www.python.org/psf/fiscal-sponsorees/
| teh64 wrote:
| Thanks for the correction!
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| A portion of pycon expenses are spent on outreach and
| teaching during the event. Arguably all of pycon is
| outreach. There are dedicated grants, aid, support as
| well. The 2019 PDF breakdown doesn't seem to be available
| any longer.
|
| During the 2010s, the packaging group was begging for
| help. "We're only volunteers," a common refrain:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46605018
|
| During the 2020s, funding for packaging was provided by
| Mozilla and Chan-Zuck, as PSF wasn't doing enough.
| https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2019/
|
| As we all know, Astral stepped in and solved the problem
| for them. I moved to their tools as soon as was possible.
| And not simply because they were fast, but because they
| work.
|
| For example, here's one that pypa broke for my package a
| couple of years ago in pip, and never fixed:
| https://github.com/pypa/packaging/issues/774
| jborean93 wrote:
| > They refused to invest in packaging to the extent that a
| separate company (astral) had to do it for them
|
| uv didn't just happen in a vacuum, there has been lots of
| investment in the Python packaging ecosystem that has enabled
| it (and other tools) to try and improve the shortcomings of
| Python and packaging.
|
| There's PEP 518 [1] for build requirements, PEP 600 [2] for
| manylinux wheels, PEP 621 [3] for pyproject.toml, PEP 656 [4]
| for musl wheels platform identifiers, PEP 723 [5] for inline
| script metadata.
|
| Without all this uv wouldn't be a thing and we would be stuck
| with pip and setuptools or a bunch of more bandaid hacks on
| top making the whole thing brittle.
|
| [1] https://peps.python.org/pep-0518/ [2]
| https://peps.python.org/pep-0600/ [3]
| https://peps.python.org/pep-0621/ [4]
| https://peps.python.org/pep-0654/ [5]
| https://peps.python.org/pep-0723/
| iwontberude wrote:
| It seemed pipenv is more than sufficient, why should I use
| uv?
| jborean93 wrote:
| That's the thing, you don't have to :) While I think uv
| is a great tool and highly recommend it, you are more
| than welcome to use any of the other build backends or
| package management tools that fit your workstyle. By
| having these packaging PEPs (amongst) others, the
| ecosystem has been able to try out different approaches
| and most likely over time will consolidate on specific
| ones that work better than the others.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Anecdata, but uv served as a very good packaging
| mechanism for a Python library I had to throw on an _in
| extremis_ box, one that is not connected to the Internet
| in any way, and one where messing with the system Python
| was verboten and Docker was a four-letter word.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Obviously, but writing PEPs is not enough. Read through the
| comments under any Python thread here from the late 2010s
| to early 2020s. Just ~two years ago you couldn't talk about
| anything Python-related without discussion veering far
| offtopic to complain about packaging.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| As far as I'm aware, Python was only recently (2020s) taught in
| most schools, so that's the reason it wasn't and isn't well
| funded. Schools will stick with legacy languages far beyond
| their market lifetimes, as that is what the instructors know
| best. So it's not that it isn't well funded, it's that it's
| still early in terms of global popularity. As we just
| witnessed, the funding is just now coming in big drops.
| woodruffw wrote:
| MIT was already using Python by 2009[1]; I think it's been
| one of the "standard" teaching languages for well over a
| decade at this point.
|
| (By most metrics, Python became "big" in the mid-late 2000s,
| which is why the Python 3 transition was so painful.)
|
| [1]: https://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-
| switched-f...
| hamandcheese wrote:
| I must be the only one in here who thinks $1.5M is a small sum
| compared to Anthropic's size and the amount of value they have
| gotten out of Python. Good press is cheaper than I thought.
| defraudbah wrote:
| that was my first thought too, $1.5M is peanuts for Anthropic,
| however $1.5M is better than nothing, so it worth some PR too.
| Good they do, I think we have to encourage companies to do it,
| shaming will not help.
| tomComb wrote:
| You are right, it is. But it would be a mistake for us to use
| this opportunity to attack them for it.
|
| We should applaud their donation today, and at another time
| assess the meager contributions of many companies that should
| be shamed.
| DrBazza wrote:
| Every single financial institution on Wall Street, the City
| of London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Dubai and so on, uses Python.
| Very few contribute.
|
| I've worked at a few that use the 'mold' linker to
| dramatically reduce their build times. Again, very few
| contribute. In this particular case, I managed to get one
| former employer to make a donation.
|
| But the list goes on.
|
| Short arms, deep pockets, as the saying goes.
| tyre wrote:
| It's interesting to see everyone advocate for open source
| software with permissive licenses, then get mad when
| companies use them.
|
| If python wants to require money for updates or for
| customers over $X in revenue, they can!
|
| If companies don't want to donate, they don't have to just
| as python contributors don't have to if they're annoyed at
| how it's used.
| 1stranger wrote:
| All people do here is complain.
| notyourwork wrote:
| We can both applaud the effort and indicate it's not enough.
| Two things can be true simultaneously.
| skeledrew wrote:
| It may not be enough, but I think it'd be more
| appropriate/constructive to point to other companies
| benefiting from Python that have never contributed, rather
| than saying one that contributed didn't do enough.
| german_dong wrote:
| I mean, it's 1.5M more than the foundation knows what to do
| with.
| Fokamul wrote:
| It's easy to donate, since it's not their money. They are not
| profitable. Just Nvidia's money, they're paying themselves for
| new GPUs and datacenters.
| returnInfinity wrote:
| They are probably trying to build influence. Why is a startup
| that is burning cash donating money?
| jedberg wrote:
| Of course they are. These donations usually come out of the
| marketing budget. And it's working, we're talking about them.
|
| But also they rely heavily on Python and want to support the
| ecosystem.
| nedbat wrote:
| Is it so hard to imagine that they do it because the PSF's work
| is important and they want to support them? All the AI labs
| depend hugely on the Python ecosystem and infrastructure.
| Startups burning cash spend on many things that are important
| to them.
| red2awn wrote:
| They are heavily focused on code. Claude Code likely generates
| 100 of millions lines of Python a day, make the language a
| little bit better with $1.5M is extremely high leverage.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Care to elaborate on how $1.5M makes Python better?
| adeelk93 wrote:
| You're asking how money can be used to improve software?
| skeledrew wrote:
| The donation is earmarked for security concerns, ie.
| improving PyPI from a security perspective to
| prevent/mitigate supply chain attacks, etc. This means a
| more healthy Python ecosystem, which also benefits their
| products which are utilizing said ecosystem likely more
| than any other.
| rented_mule wrote:
| And if this money improves PyPI security (part of the focus),
| that reduces the chance of Claude Code adding malicious
| packages to a code base (a well publicized case of this could
| be a big PR headache for Anthropic). This donation is likely
| much better leverage than trying to somehow add mitigation at
| the Claude Code level.
| amykhar wrote:
| Businesses should definitely support the open source projects
| that they use. I'm still astounded that professional developers
| seem so adverse to paying for the tools and libraries that they
| use to make their own money.
| nikcub wrote:
| really find a negative in it ey - what type of donation and
| from who would be acceptable to you to fund the python
| foundation?
| heliumtera wrote:
| It's certainly better than absolute nothing!
| mac-attack wrote:
| Maybe I'm the only one realizing it's exactly the same amount
| they were due to receive from the US Govt until the Trump
| administration said they were too woke.
| globular-toast wrote:
| "Over two years". Does that mean the foundation has to do what
| they want it to do or else the tap stops?
| skeledrew wrote:
| Well the funds are earmarked for security matters, so it should
| be spent regarding that.
| nikanj wrote:
| Internal forecasts indicate Anthropic's annualized revenue run-
| rate could be between about $20 billion and $26 billion in 2026.
| Let's shoot for the middle, $23 billion
|
| According to multiple articles, Anthropic expects to reduce its
| cash burn to around one-third of revenue in 2026.
|
| This implies total spending is roughly revenue + cash burn [?]
| $23 billion + $7.7 billion [?] $30.7 billion
|
| When you divide the total spending to the length of the whole
| year, $1.5 million would sustain Anthropic for roughly 0.43
| hours, or about 26 minutes.
| nedbat wrote:
| It does seem small at Anthropic scale. But instead of faulting
| them for contributing "so little", maybe we can point to the
| thousands of large companies that are doing _nothing_.
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