Python Foundation Nonprofit Fixes Bylaw Loophole That Left 'Virtually Unlimited' Financial Liability (blogspot.com) 16
The Python Software Foundation's board "was alerted to a defect in our bylaws that exposes the Foundation to an unbounded financial liability," according to a blog post Friday:
Specifically, Bylaws Article XIII as originally written compels the Python Software Foundation to extend indemnity coverage to individual Members (including our thousands of "Basic Members") in certain cases, and to advance legal defense expenses to individual Members with surprisingly few restrictions. Further, the Bylaws compel the Foundation to take out insurance to cover these requirements, however, insurance of this nature is not actually available to 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporations such as the Python Software Foundation to purchase, and thus it is impossible in practice to comply with this requirement.
In the unlikely but not impossible event of the Foundation being called upon to advance such expenses, the potential financial burden would be virtually unlimited, and there would be no recourse to insurance. As this is an existential threat to the Foundation, the Board has agreed that it must immediately reduce the Foundation's exposure, and has opted to exercise its ability to amend the Bylaws by a majority vote of the Board directors, rather than by putting it to a vote of the membership, as allowed by Bylaws Article XI.
Acting on legal advice, the full Board has voted unanimously to amend its Bylaws to no longer extend an offer to indemnify, advance legal expenses, or insure Members when they are not serving at the request of the Foundation. The amended Bylaws still allow for indemnification of a much smaller set of individuals acting on behalf of the PSF such as Board Members and officers, which is in line with standard nonprofit governance practices and for which we already hold appropriate insurance.
Another blog post notes "the recent slew of conversations, initially kicked off in response to a bylaws change proposal, has been pretty alienating for many members of our community." - After the conversation on PSF-Vote had gotten pretty ugly, forty-five people out of ~1000 unsubscribed. (That list has since been put on announce-only)
- We received a lot of Code of Conduct reports or moderation requests about the PSF-vote mailing list and the discuss.python.org message board conversations. (Several reports have already been acted on or closed and the rest will be soon).
- PSF staff received private feedback that the blanket statements about "neurodiverse people", the bizarre motives ascribed to the people in charge of the PSF and various volunteers and the sideways comments about the kinds of people making reports were also very off-putting.
In the unlikely but not impossible event of the Foundation being called upon to advance such expenses, the potential financial burden would be virtually unlimited, and there would be no recourse to insurance. As this is an existential threat to the Foundation, the Board has agreed that it must immediately reduce the Foundation's exposure, and has opted to exercise its ability to amend the Bylaws by a majority vote of the Board directors, rather than by putting it to a vote of the membership, as allowed by Bylaws Article XI.
Acting on legal advice, the full Board has voted unanimously to amend its Bylaws to no longer extend an offer to indemnify, advance legal expenses, or insure Members when they are not serving at the request of the Foundation. The amended Bylaws still allow for indemnification of a much smaller set of individuals acting on behalf of the PSF such as Board Members and officers, which is in line with standard nonprofit governance practices and for which we already hold appropriate insurance.
Another blog post notes "the recent slew of conversations, initially kicked off in response to a bylaws change proposal, has been pretty alienating for many members of our community." - After the conversation on PSF-Vote had gotten pretty ugly, forty-five people out of ~1000 unsubscribed. (That list has since been put on announce-only)
- We received a lot of Code of Conduct reports or moderation requests about the PSF-vote mailing list and the discuss.python.org message board conversations. (Several reports have already been acted on or closed and the rest will be soon).
- PSF staff received private feedback that the blanket statements about "neurodiverse people", the bizarre motives ascribed to the people in charge of the PSF and various volunteers and the sideways comments about the kinds of people making reports were also very off-putting.
neuro-diverse my ass (Score:3, Informative)
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Either you can perform required tasks with acceptable social skills or you cannot. "Diversity" is something like, I was born a woman or with black skin, and the employment process should not discriminate against those kinds of people because those are traits unrelated to job proficiency. If your brain doesn't work or you have the social skills of a raccoon then you should not work in such a challenging job. We should not celebrate people of marginal qualifications.
If you’re not going to “celebrate” people of marginal qualifications, then you had better figure out what you’re going to say to every Child we never Left Behind from the Participation Trophy Generation who was praised and rewarded for their existence.
It’s ironic that most social media junkies have the social skills of a raccoon. It’s almost as if social media has fuck all to do with actual human interaction, and everything to do with profiting off human interaction no m
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the Participation Trophy Generation who was praised and rewarded for their existence.
Why do you chide the then-children for what adults did?
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It sounds like you're telling everyone that they gave you the boot for being intolerant, combative, and aggressive.
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If you can't follow the simple rule of don't be an asshole and stay on topic, then you just might be the problem.
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It sounds like you couldn't attack The Point
Wait, you were making a point, not just ranting?
Okay, let's see what the point might be:
"a) Either you can perform required tasks with acceptable social skills or you cannot."
True.
"b) 'Diversity' is something like, I was born a woman or with black skin, and the employment process should not discriminate against those kinds of people because those are traits unrelated to job proficiency."
There's an affirmation here, namely, that employment must be related to job proficiency.
This is certainly the case in Capi
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I'm reasonably sure RMS falls into the "neuro diverse" category.
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Could someone decode the following for me:
‘PSF staff received private feedback that the blanket statements about “neurodiverse people [blogspot.com]”, the bizarre motives ascribed to the people in charge of the PSF and various volunteers and the sideways comments about the kinds of people making reports were also very off-putting.’
Shouldnt be controversial (Score:5, Interesting)
People freaking out about is weird af. Its unlikely that there is ever going to be much of a need for indemnity protection, but nobody can see the future, and we cant rule out a tragic accident at a conference or other rare but conceivable events. Language that opens the python foundation up to silly money lawsuits could sink a technology relied on by billions. Putting in some sensible limitations to liability only makes sense, particularly if not doing so removes or reduces the foundations ability to insure its operations.
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People freaking out about is weird af. Its unlikely that there is ever going to be much of a need for indemnity protection, but nobody can see the future, and we cant rule out a tragic accident at a conference or other rare but conceivable events. Language that opens the python foundation up to silly money lawsuits could sink a technology relied on by billions. Putting in some sensible limitations to liability only makes sense, particularly if not doing so removes or reduces the foundations ability to insure its operations.
The fact is people have to freak out about our rather fucked legal system, and the lawyers who seem to make it worse every day.
Yes. Lawyers. Also known as the self-serving group that benefits greatly from making more and more self-serving laws to get caught up in self-serving class-action lawsuits (as if the victims get paid), all with a special language of fine print so despised by society not even the lawyers who write EULAs for a living bother to read them.
When mere “language” has the abili
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> our rather fucked legal system, and the lawyers who seem to make it worse every day
Many States' Supreme Courts asserted control over the appointment of judges and credentialing of attorneys in the 1960's and required judges to be lawyers and lawyers to be law-school graduates.
Before this Professional Managerial Class assault neither were true and if you sued a homeowner over the town sidewalk outside of his home you would have been admonished or laughed out of court, had to pay costs, and would lose re
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Why? Open Source is designed to allow the technology to survive the disappearance of the original authors. It's a major reason for the existence and application of the traditional open source licenses like GPL, BSD, Apache. In the OSS community, nobody is irreplaceable.
Contrast this with the closed (or pretend-open) source world. In those worlds, if the owner of the source is run over by a
Re:Shouldnt be controversial (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Unless there is something hidden here, this should not have been a controversial issue at all. Looks to me there is some problem in that community. Things boiling under the surface because the Code of Conduct does effectively not allow an open discussion? Would not surprise me. These things are toxic.
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When you read every code of conduct it all comes down to this. Don't be an asshole and stay on topic. No politics or personal insults. If simple rules like this upset you then you're probably the asshole.