Python Foundation Donations Surge After Rejecting Grant - But Sponsorships Still Needed (blogspot.com) 64
After the Python Software Foundation rejected a $1.5 million grant because it restricted DEI activity, "a flood of new donations followed," according to a new report. By Friday they'd raised over $157,000, including 295 new Supporting Members paying an annual $99 membership fee, says PSF executive director Deb Nicholson.
"It doesn't quite bridge the gap of $1.5 million, but it's incredibly impactful for us, both financially and in terms of feeling this strong groundswell of support from the community." Could that same security project still happen if new funding materializes? The PSF hasn't entirely given up. "The PSF is always looking for new opportunities to fund work benefiting the Python community," Nicholson told me in an email last week, adding pointedly that "we have received some helpful suggestions in response to our announcement that we will be pursuing." And even as things stand, the PSF sees itself as "always developing or implementing the latest technologies for protecting PyPI project maintainers and users from current threats," and it plans to continue with that commitment.
The Python Software Foundation was "astounded and deeply appreciative at the outpouring of solidarity in both words and actions," their executive director wrote in a new blog post this week, saying the show of support "reminds us of the community's strength."
But that post also acknowledges the reality that the Python Software Foundation's yearly revenue and assets (including contributions from major donors) "have declined, and costs have increased,..." Historically, PyCon US has been a source of revenue for the PSF, enabling us to fund programs like our currently paused Grants Program... Unfortunately, PyCon US has run at a loss for three years — and not from a lack of effort from our staff and volunteers! Everyone has been working very hard to find areas where we can trim costs, but even with those efforts, inflation continues to surge, and changing U.S. and economic conditions have reduced our attendance... Because we have so few expense categories (the vast majority of our spending goes to running PyCon US, the Grants Program, and our small 13-member staff), we have limited "levers to pull" when it comes to budgeting and long-term sustainability...
While Python usage continues to surge, "corporate investment back into the language and the community has declined overall. The PSF has longstanding sponsors and partners that we are ever grateful for, but signing on new corporate sponsors has slowed." (They're asking employees at Python-using companies to encourage sponsorships.) We have been seeking out alternate revenue channels to diversify our income, with some success and some challenges. PyPI Organizations offers paid features to companies (PyPI features are always free to community groups) and has begun bringing in monthly income. We've also been seeking out grant opportunities where we find good fits with our mission.... We currently have more than six months of runway (as opposed to our preferred 12 months+ of runway), so the PSF is not at immediate risk of having to make more dramatic changes, but we are on track to face difficult decisions if the situation doesn't shift in the next year.
Based on all of this, the PSF has been making changes and working on multiple fronts to combat losses and work to ensure financial sustainability, in order to continue protecting and serving the community in the long term. Some of these changes and efforts include:
— Pursuing new sponsors, specifically in the AI industry and the security sector
— Increasing sponsorship package pricing to match inflation
— Making adjustments to reduce PyCon US expenses
— Pursuing funding opportunities in the US and Europe
— Working with other organizations to raise awareness
— Strategic planning, to ensure we are maximizing our impact for the community while cultivating mission-aligned revenue channels
The PSF's end-of-year fundraiser effort is usually run by staff based on their capacity, but this year we have assembled a fundraising team that includes Board members to put some more "oomph" behind the campaign. We'll be doing our regular fundraising activities; we'll also be creating a unique webpage, piloting temporary and VERY visible pop-ups to python.org and PyPI.org, and telling more stories from our Grants Program recipients...
Keep your eyes on the PSF Blog, the PSF category on Discuss, and our social media accounts for updates and information as we kick off the fundraiser this month. Your boosts of our posts and your personal shares of "why I support the PSF" stories will make all the difference in our end-of-year fundraiser. If this post has you all fired up to personally support the future of Python and the PSF right now, we always welcome new PSF Supporting Members and donations.
"It doesn't quite bridge the gap of $1.5 million, but it's incredibly impactful for us, both financially and in terms of feeling this strong groundswell of support from the community." Could that same security project still happen if new funding materializes? The PSF hasn't entirely given up. "The PSF is always looking for new opportunities to fund work benefiting the Python community," Nicholson told me in an email last week, adding pointedly that "we have received some helpful suggestions in response to our announcement that we will be pursuing." And even as things stand, the PSF sees itself as "always developing or implementing the latest technologies for protecting PyPI project maintainers and users from current threats," and it plans to continue with that commitment.
The Python Software Foundation was "astounded and deeply appreciative at the outpouring of solidarity in both words and actions," their executive director wrote in a new blog post this week, saying the show of support "reminds us of the community's strength."
But that post also acknowledges the reality that the Python Software Foundation's yearly revenue and assets (including contributions from major donors) "have declined, and costs have increased,..." Historically, PyCon US has been a source of revenue for the PSF, enabling us to fund programs like our currently paused Grants Program... Unfortunately, PyCon US has run at a loss for three years — and not from a lack of effort from our staff and volunteers! Everyone has been working very hard to find areas where we can trim costs, but even with those efforts, inflation continues to surge, and changing U.S. and economic conditions have reduced our attendance... Because we have so few expense categories (the vast majority of our spending goes to running PyCon US, the Grants Program, and our small 13-member staff), we have limited "levers to pull" when it comes to budgeting and long-term sustainability...
While Python usage continues to surge, "corporate investment back into the language and the community has declined overall. The PSF has longstanding sponsors and partners that we are ever grateful for, but signing on new corporate sponsors has slowed." (They're asking employees at Python-using companies to encourage sponsorships.) We have been seeking out alternate revenue channels to diversify our income, with some success and some challenges. PyPI Organizations offers paid features to companies (PyPI features are always free to community groups) and has begun bringing in monthly income. We've also been seeking out grant opportunities where we find good fits with our mission.... We currently have more than six months of runway (as opposed to our preferred 12 months+ of runway), so the PSF is not at immediate risk of having to make more dramatic changes, but we are on track to face difficult decisions if the situation doesn't shift in the next year.
Based on all of this, the PSF has been making changes and working on multiple fronts to combat losses and work to ensure financial sustainability, in order to continue protecting and serving the community in the long term. Some of these changes and efforts include:
— Pursuing new sponsors, specifically in the AI industry and the security sector
— Increasing sponsorship package pricing to match inflation
— Making adjustments to reduce PyCon US expenses
— Pursuing funding opportunities in the US and Europe
— Working with other organizations to raise awareness
— Strategic planning, to ensure we are maximizing our impact for the community while cultivating mission-aligned revenue channels
The PSF's end-of-year fundraiser effort is usually run by staff based on their capacity, but this year we have assembled a fundraising team that includes Board members to put some more "oomph" behind the campaign. We'll be doing our regular fundraising activities; we'll also be creating a unique webpage, piloting temporary and VERY visible pop-ups to python.org and PyPI.org, and telling more stories from our Grants Program recipients...
Keep your eyes on the PSF Blog, the PSF category on Discuss, and our social media accounts for updates and information as we kick off the fundraiser this month. Your boosts of our posts and your personal shares of "why I support the PSF" stories will make all the difference in our end-of-year fundraiser. If this post has you all fired up to personally support the future of Python and the PSF right now, we always welcome new PSF Supporting Members and donations.
Re: Remember kids (Score:2)
Biden followed that very same line of thinking and let in several million "farm laborers" during his time in office. And in Massachusetts at least, they were all entitled to free stuff to the tune of over $1b per year out of a state budget of about $55b.
You can have a welfare state or you can open borders but you cannot have both at the same time unless you want to make yourself destitute out of principle.
Re: (Score:1)
holy shit right out the gate with the NPC talking points with a biden reference to boot.
thanks for making my propaganda point, conservatives have no original thoughts left in those skulls rattling like empty paint cans. you've just subsumed your own shit for so long you dont know what the rest of the world smells like anymore. just repeat what facebook and tv told you and move on.
Re: Remember kids (Score:1)
Yeah man. You guys are shining paragons of clearheaded rationality. It would be criminal not to hand over the reigns of power to you. It's so obvious you won't run away to crazytown with it either.
Re: (Score:1)
From what I've read, DEI includes balancing opportunities based on race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, age, disabilities, and other life experiences.
Focusing on race as the only factor of DEI reveals the fears of the opponents, not the recipients. Balancing the work environment for gender helps break the "old boys" clubs. Offering extra opportunities for those in poor neighborhoods helps to break the chain of poverty. Encouraging the realistic hiring opportunities of older w
Re: Remember kids (Score:2)
What you're saying here is that no one should ever try to remedy the evils of the past.
That's stupid shit.
Fuck that stupid shit.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
you don't remedy anything by putting unqualified candidates in positions they are not suited for just because of their race or gender, all while excluding those who are qualified. You just create more acrimony.
Re: Remember kids (Score:2)
Oh no, acrimony from racists. They would never have been problematic before. You have to put white people in those roles without qualifications or you will upset the racists! Clown.
Re: (Score:2)
That you don't self-identify as a racist, doesn't mean that you're not one. You insist that members of a certain race should have benefits above others, for no reason relevant to the people concerned.
Re: Remember kids (Score:5, Insightful)
When people describe DEI as hiring unqualified minorities what they mean is that people should be considered unqualified if they are a minority.
Re: Remember kids (Score:2, Flamebait)
Ending DEI in federal agencies without a substitute policy is a violation of rulings related to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Preventing private businesses, universities, and individuals from applying DEI-like policies in their own hiring practices is a violation of the First Amendment.
Not that anyone is going to stand up to a court dead set on creating the first Unitarian Executive in US history.
America voted the way they did because they wanted the government ran like a business with a CEO holding absolute
Re: (Score:2)
Not only will the government have future legal complications because of it, many of the corporations that have abandoned their DEI policies fail to consider that they originally instituted them as part of lawsuit settlements, and that cancelling their policies will likely result in the same institutional racism that led to the earlier lawsuits.
Except now they've done it on purpose, knowing that the earlier harms would return, and the lawsuits will be bigger.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh mark my words, the fallout from this ludicrously malicious administration will be felt for a generation, just not by the generation that got the administration into power.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Remember kids (Score:5, Insightful)
The error with your math is that it only works on spherical minorities in a vacuum. The world did not begin when you started thinking about it, and in the millions of real lives that were lived before you started trying to justify your social position, out-groups were excluded from contention in the meritocracy, and in-groups were improperly promoted within it because the in-group is often blind to it's own bias
Neither education to help recognize of this bias, nor an attempt to correct for this bias' historical effect is racism. One would think the party that complains constantly that "X isn't racism" would be willing to recognize the distinction. But instead, they use government pressure to keep people ignorant of history, and government money to erect Confederate monuments in the year of our Lord 2025. [wbur.org]
What is happening is not subtle, and if you deserve a place in the meritocracy you should be able to see the distinction without thinking any less of yourself.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Cliques, not clicks.
I find it quite strange... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the "AI" userland seems to run on python yet nobody from the "AI" big names have stepped in to help even for the pittance that is (for them) 1.5M US.
What an ungrateful bunch.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: I find it quite strange... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think you may have a good point here...
What does this foundation do? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not clear from the article what the foundation does or why it exists.
It seems to give out grants. Why?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What does this foundation do? (Score:5, Informative)
They have an impact report on their website. The 2024 one is here: https://s3.dualstack.us-east-2... [amazonaws.com]
I just read it. Mostly they run pypi, they own the license to cpython (like fsf does for many projects). They run a conference: pycon. They have a couple of developers. They give out grants to make python better.
They have a budget of about 4M. So it is a reasonnably small organization.
Re: (Score:1)
I was just asking what they do. I don't give a shit about their dei activities.
Re: (Score:3)
I think you might be responding to the wrong comment. I just pointed out the activity report which highlight what it is the do...
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know. I took it as a real question.
Maybe because I asked myself the question. Though I took the time to google it when GGP didn't and posted instead. (Which I also do that sometimes.)
Re: (Score:1)
I have a hard time following what post responses on here go to.
But if you are referring to my question about what this foundation does, yes it was a "real" question. Why wouldn't it be? I never heard of this foundation before and I've never used python.
Re: What does this foundation do? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Good. I don't like shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't it fair that public money (Score:1)
Re:Isn't it fair that public money (Score:5, Informative)
What was irrelevant was the new-this-year requirement that even different work (not funded by any public money) would now also have to stop if (in the administration's view) it promoted inclusion.
Re:Isn't it fair that public money (Score:5, Informative)
Possibly. But that is not relevant here.
The grant requirement was not that the grant money can't be used for DEI. But rather that while the grant is active, the institution can't have any DEI activity (regardless of how they are funded).
And personnally, I don't think the government should do that. (Even though, I am aware, that a LOT of the way the federal government implements policies is through these "if you take this money, then you can't do that other unrelated thing")
Re: (Score:2)
There's probably contract language that states that by accepting the money, Python can be used by the military and law enforcement.
Celebrate your country's independence by (Score:1, Informative)
blowing up a small portion of it.
In a similar vein:
Achieve inter-ethnic harmony by dividing people along ethnic lines, assigning moral worth to ethnicity, and then doling out punishments and rewards using ethnicity as a criterion.
Remember folks: the alternative to racism is *not* "anti-racism" but simply "not-racism." Which DEI as practiced is decidedly not.
Yeah Trump 2 is about as disappointing as Trump 1. Along the dimension of to DEI or not to DEI, he's not wrong.
Real America way of America in America (Score:2)
We're going out with a bang, not a whimper.
Indirect impact (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps these requirements to drop DEI were not so much about DEI but about savings and getting the job done. In my experience, DEI programmes can be pretty expensive, can slow down hiring, and politics of any kind always obstruct the path to the goal. So perhaps it's not about being anti-DEI but about efficiency and getting the job done at a tight budget.
Re: (Score:1)
In my experience
And what, I might ask, is your experience, exactly ?
Anti-DEI people have all kinds of pseudo-rational justifications for their stance, but one that comes up often is that it prevents enterprises from hiring based on merit and qualification. Well guess what ? Enterprises never hired based on merit and qualification.
People are racist pigs, period. DEI is an imperfect solution for an imperfect, shitty, defective-by-design species.
If anyone has a better solution, I'm ready to hear it.
Re: (Score:2)
DEI is racist, end of story.
And the situation before DEI was also racist, end of story.
Again: What is your solution ?
Hint: The status quo isn't it.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Indirect impact (Score:4, Informative)
If someone wants to argue merit then I have a long list of cabinet members who are grossly unqualified for their positions.
Re:Indirect impact (Score:4, Insightful)
You're talking about efficiency in the same breath as the guy who is currently building a $300 million whitehouse ballroom while the government is shut down? https://www.pbs.org/newshour/p... [pbs.org]
The same guy who spends 25% of his time golfing? https://didtrumpgolftoday.com/ [didtrumpgolftoday.com]
Re: Indirect impact (Score:2)
Many top level business execs in USA do a lot of their business at the golf courses. I remember that in my old uni an introductory golf couse was basically a semi-required elective for MBA students. I have known a PhD student who obtained a valuable stock trading data set by simply spending a lot of time building relationships with finance people, including playing golf with them.
Re: (Score:1)
You're talking about efficiency in the same breath as the guy who is currently building a $300 million whitehouse ballroom while the government is shut down
Using donations from individuals. Oh the horrors.
Re: (Score:2)
X11Libre, a DEI-free fork of X11, needed to explain its DEI-free commitment: https://github.com/X11Libre/mi... [github.com]
And in doing so, the developer used the wrong "power-of-two" operator: https://github.com/X11Libre/xs... [github.com]
This fork was specifically created because the developer was thrown out of the parent project for pushing code that broke things too much, requiring a mass rollback.
It's only technically correct that a dropping DEI isn't related to
LOL WUT? (Score:2, Interesting)
they'd raised over $157,000
It doesn't quite bridge the gap of $1.5 million
That's a bit of an understatement. They raised only 10% of the offered amount. LOL!
I certainly hope that they did not need that $1.5m. This was a stupid decision if they didn't need it and an asinine decision if they did need it.
Dear Foundation (Score:2)
Your money is dirty. Poisoned. It comes with strings. And something is ... wrong with YOU for attaching those strings. You are broken. And you probably don't see it.
Thanks, but no thanks.