Looks like some kind of power play...

Originally discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41234180

My experience is that discussions of bylaw changes tend to get heated and that trying to change your bylaws is like Russian Roulette, that is maybe 1/6 of the time there is some disaster which is either the end of he organization or that results in a major loss of members.

What the hell, has everyone caught and gone gung-ho on censorship? What the actual f*** is this?

How in the hell do you have the balls or ovaries to ban the creator --for something so inane. It's like a highscool supe who gets no respect and will at every chance show you the little power she has in such a classless way. So utterly petty defying belief.

I hope those dweebs get voted out pronto. That's an absurd abuse of power.

People who trip like that have no business having any power or control.

Most people haven't gone crazy, the kinds of people on this board are experts in silencing dissent and making it appear that way. I really hope the Python community can hold an open poll or discussion on a forum not controlled by the fascists and force the board to resign.

> gung-ho on censorship? What the actual f** is this?

Unintenti**l irony

there's a difference between being polite and having your post removed entirely

Of course, but it still elicits a reasonable chuckle.

I hope that's just a rib. Else, one should be able to tell self control over stamping authority over others. Very few people openly speak their inner monologue, uncensored just releasing their stream of consciousness like a delirious hobo down a stench filled alleyway.

I speak my "inner monologue" and it is nothing like delirium or stench. Not sure who you are or who you're hanging out with, but better to get the stench out than let it fester.

It was funny that you censored yourself, in a comment about censorship, that's all :-)

You did have any opportunity to rewrite your sentence to use any other word than f**, one that did not require self-censoring. Yet you did not. Why?

> It's like a highscool supe who gets no respect and will at every chance show you the little power

Sayre's Law, effectively, the smaller the stakes the bigger the fights/politics.

See also: HOAs, academia.

You are making a general point, but does it apply specifically?

Here's the Python Code of Conduct for communication on official Python forums, and comm+behavior at official Python events: https://policies.python.org/python.org/code-of-conduct

What specific items do you disagree with?

* The top section "Our Community" is just general stuff like "be respectful." Is that a problem?

* The list of "Inappropriate Behavior" for meatspace Python events, what is wrong with it? Harassment, Deliberate intimidation, stalking, Incitement of violence, Insults, put downs, or jokes that are based upon stereotypes...

I'm sure we will all find some items we disagree with (really, no reference to "hugs"???) but you are challenging the very premise of a CoC.

The problem is selective enforcement and different interpretation of the listed terms. The Steering Council itself has been guilty of at least (verbal) harassment, insults, put downs and sarcastic jokes.

But they are safe.

> The list of "Inappropriate Behavior" for meatspace Python events, what is wrong with it? Harassment, Deliberate intimidation, stalking, Incitement of violence,

That's all so damned obvious that it doesn't need to be said...

> Insults, put downs, or jokes that are based upon stereotypes...

And there's the actual point of the CoC - to ban any attitudes not steeped in feminine ideology, and it can piss right off.

I am challenging the very premise of a CoC. They are useless newspeak documents made only to enforce the ideology of those in positions of power and not benefit the project. “Don’t be an ass” is standard fare in polite society. Do you need to be told “don’t scream at people” every day when you leave the house? Perhaps those with low inhibition and self-control need such a reminder, but I would argue those are the ones enforcing them the hardest. They are redundant in every form and your argument is reductive. “See? You can’t complain about this part, it’s standard etiquette! And even if you do disagree, don’t we all find things we disagree with?” It ignores the entirety of the point, which is that the sum of a CoC is torturous to a project, and makes it unlikely people will want to play ball with a project due to their loaded nature.

CoCs were invented by non-programmers to push ideological beliefs to programmers, and was accepted because they weren’t immediately toxic to the community. Akin to a cancer taking time to spread.

> Do you need to be told “don’t scream at people”

Not any more, now I've been told

I am one of those people who had to be told. Glad I was to.d why people were scared of me. It was very helpful

If you do not need it, good on you. Do not read it

> You are making a general point, but does it apply specifically?

Yes. What you are missing is the separate "Enforcement Procedures" section: https://policies.python.org/python.org/code-of-conduct/Enfor... . Some quotes:

> If the incident occurred outside the community, but a community member's mental health or physical safety may be negatively impacted if no action is taken, the incident may be in scope.

IOW: they hold themselves free to go after people for stating political opinions entirely outside of any Python-related context, if someone else in a Python space deems those opinions sufficiently traumatizing.

> Does this pose a safety risk? Does the behavior put a person's physical safety at risk? Will this incident severely negatively impact someone's mental health?

Again, getting "triggered" by something is considered a matter of "safety". Some people are apparently fragile, and not responsible for their own actions, while others have a moral duty not to offend them.

> A person who makes a report should receive a follow-up email stating what action was taken in response to the report. If the work group decided no response was needed, they should provide an email explaining why it was not a Code of Conduct violation. Reports that are not made in good faith (such as "reverse sexism" or "reverse racism") may receive no response.

IOW: you have no recourse if people discriminate against you for being white or for being male. Not only that, but proposing that such a thing occurred is considered inherently "bad faith". And they will stuff terms in your mouth for this that you didn't actually use. [0] But not only that, when I was banned, they held up such an argument (by the way, the accusation that I even made such an argument was completely false) as itself a Code of Conduct violation, despite no language in that document which could possibly support such a claim.

Speaking of which, they don't even follow these procedures if they're inconvenient. See the "Follow up with the reported person" section? None of that bears any resemblance to how I was treated. (Not that it could, because I did nothing wrong and my "behaviour" had no reasonable "negative impact". [1])

There are tons of other "cultural" aspects you seem to be unaware of here. For example, defenders of the Work Group and their policies will constantly bring up (without naming names, as if anyone were unaware) the Adria Richards "Donglegate" incident from PyCon 2013. This is always described as a cautionary tale about what might happen to others like Richards without their CoC enforcement. It is never mentioned that Richards eavesdropped on a private conversation, took offense to a joke not intended to cause harm to anyone (and not even jokingly proposing any harmful idea!), and then ignored all the incident reporting procedures in the newly written PyCon CoC, opting instead to skip straight to social media for a round of public shaming.

[0] It's people with this political position who use the terms "reverse sexism" and "reverse racism"; people who correctly recognize the fact that racism can victimize white people (and be directly the fault of people who are not white, acting fully on their own agency) also correctly just call it "racism". Similarly for sexism.

[1] If you don't take that at face value, you are welcome to read my own backup of my posts related to the banning: https://zahlman.github.io/dpo_archive/ .

It's starting to swing back already, as people are beginning to realise where this ~decade of identity-over-competence is leading us.

I think people are starting to see the long term consequences now; but the problem has been building for decades.

You don't get every university across every ostensible democracy banning free speech yet permitting physical violence against 'the far right' over night.

You need to subvert and replace the establishment piece by piece.

What we're seeing now is what happens when that sort of incompetence starts to impact manufacturing, engineering, production and the training the people in the field.

So the whole damned thing is turned on its head;

Here's an example: during Covid, the only people who were not purged from the medical establishment were those who adhered to the narrative. That's disturbing - the so called health care system intentionally purged of any person critical enough to question that narrative.

And even now that health care system retains the same personal and repeats that same line.

(If you really wanna know what the actual numbers look like the only people with numbers that can be trusted are funeral homes and insurance providers.)

But right now (in the middle of a health care crisis) some of the most competent doctors, nurses, etc remain unable to work because of mandates for them to undergo an invasive experimental procedure (from some of the least trustworthy companies in the world).

(That is to say, any bloody doctor I'd be even remotely inclined to trust with my wellbeing.)

Competency purged; 100 flowers pruned.

I could go on and on, but I shouldn't, so I won't.

Adios.

Try posting something critical of the cult on r/conservative. There’s nothing uniquely leftist about censorship.

I can't; I got permabanned from the site for hate speech.

What did I say? That it's unfair for men to compete in women's sports and that TRAs use bad faith tactics like deplatforming as a means to silence their critics and avoid debate.

The weaponisation of censorship is predominantly a far left tactic.

> The weaponisation of censorship is predominantly a far left tactic.

Incorrect. It's an authoritarian tactic, which can either be left or right.

On the right today is Idaho with their new book banning law prohibiting minors from accessing books with LGBTQ+ themes (regardless of whether there was any sex or not).

On the left, you have Tipper Gore which was famous for advocating for the sticker placed on CD's to alert people of potentially terrible lyrics.

> On the right today is Idaho with their new book banning law prohibiting minors from accessing books with LGBTQ+ themes (regardless of whether there was any sex or not).

This is misleading. It's against anything pornographic being made accessible in schools / to people under 18 years old, LGBT or otherwise. "Homosexuality" is mentioned only once:

> 3. "Sexual conduct" means any act of masturbation, homosexuality, sexual intercourse, or physical contact with a person's clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks or, if such person be a female, the breast.

In a section that's 11 points long. Besides which, this whole section already existed, it was just amended recently and this part I quoted wasn't changed.

There is nothing that in the law that allows the libraries to defend whether a book is harmful to minors once the challenge is made. So any challenged books have to go into the adults-only section.

26% of books challenged in 2023 had no sexual content. Since the library has their hands tied, those books must go into the adults only section. Including the books on Rosa Parks.

https://idaholibraries.wildapricot.org/resources/Documents/C...

I see you are not even trying to defend your previous assertion that Idaho is "prohibiting minors from accessing books with LGBTQ+ themes (regardless of whether there was any sex or not)". Instead you have sent a couple of new soldiers into the fight.

I'm sorry, do you really need to be so damned pedantic?

Today - in the present, given the relative levels of influence of the different authoritarian groups, it is predominantly the far left that is engaged in the weaponisation of censorship.

I can't take the children's library arguments seriously any more.

Right now there are books in school libraries that are too obscene to be read from in council meetings.

> do you really need to be so damned pedantic?

This is HN. Pedantry is a badge of honor. /s

Seriously though the facts aren't in your favor. I call BS on your primary thesis.

Down voting this comment is burying your head in the sand. Censorship has been and will continue to be one the primary political fights of the 20s. They just arrested the Telegram founder a few days ago...

I don't understand why you said they didn't explain the reason for the 3-month ban. Your link [0] lays out the reasons.

I badly paraphrased what citation [1] said. I've dropped on an edit. (I have no dog in this race, other than thinking that Python is a pretty important software project. I didn't mean to editorialize.)

Re: the vote of no confidence [1]. Looks like most devs disagreed with the vote and have opted to let the council continue but transfer the "HR" Code of Conduct duties to the PSF.

[1] https://discuss.python.org/t/calling-for-a-vote-of-no-confid...

Wow, just wow. Reading all these makes me really worried about supporting anything built on Python long term. This creates an impression of a self-destructing dying community.

This is silly. The Python Foundation could die tonight and people will still build in Python for years to come because believe it or not, most people do not know or care about the happenings of these organizations.

Yeah, but my experience with Perl shows, once something like this happens, its pretty much downhill from there.

Not saying Python is going away tomorrow, in fact it might remain actively developed and used for decades to come. But with proactive thought, improvement and initiative gone. Competition will replace you in time. That's just how it works.

This is pure FUD.

No, it is pure 1984. Censorious nonsense spearheaded by those who are held unaccountable for their actions. The fact that this came about on a topic of voting systems is even more ironic.

I was replying to the comment, not the whole thread.

Also see for the last python release notes for some hardcore politics injected right into your tooling language. Python is unfortunately radioactive and can't be used responsibly anymore. They're halfway to selfdestruction

What specifically are you talking about? I couldn’t find anything political in the Python 3.12 release notes.

They probably mean the poem at the bottom here:

https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3120/

Under "And now for something completely different"

Ah. That’s really inappropriate for a technical document.

Unnecessary politics in certain tech spheres is still a norm.

For example, here's GNOME the desktop being concerned about climate change:

https://discourse.gnome.org/t/question-to-candidates-the-boa...

Oh come on guys, this is silly. We're all gonna stop using a tool because they offhand mentioned something we don't agree with? I mean, these tools are developed by people - people have opinions.

I understand politics is very divisive, but why is everyone acting like a baby? Just move on. Who cares. Python is a language, who gives a fuck they included a poem about immigration? I'm convinced nobody even found this poem organically anyway, rather one person found it and then sent it around to all their like-minded friends so they can sit around and point and laugh and complain together. You're telling me y'all ACTUALLY found this webpage and scrolled through it organically? Come oooooon.

Would you feel the same way if the message was "make America great again"?

And yes I did remove python from a big private repo and will argue against it at work when the question arises.

What will you replace it with?

in my case: c++

In the more general cases: No idea

> Would you feel the same way if the message was "make America great again"?

No, because as much as MAGA people will proclaim the ideologies don't have equal legitimacy. MAGA tried to perform a coup, are we forgetting this?

A poem about loving thy neighbor or some bullshit is not on the same level of political legitimacy as MAGA. It's not, and you know that. So why bullshit me?

> And yes I did remove python from a big private repo

Great for you. Personally, I think if this was the sole reason you removed Python that's pretty pathetic and you're someone I would consider overly emotional in decision making. But, if it sparks joy for you, then good.

For the record, Python is a shit language and good ecosystem with some okay-ish tools. I think removing python from your projects is probably a boon.

> We're all gonna stop using a tool because they offhand mentioned something we don't agree with?

No. Well, I'm not, anyway - despite my skin in the game (https://zahlman.github.io/politics/the-psf/2024/07/31/an-ope...). But I am going to offer harsh criticism of those who abuse their platforms.

This sort of thing is nothing new in Python circles. It notably led to Jack Diederich's resignation from the PSF in June 2020 (https://discuss.python.org/t/the-psf-should-be-less-politica...) and may have contributed to the mass exodus of core devs in November 2020.

> why is everyone acting like a baby? Just move on. Who cares. Python is a language, who gives a fuck

My understanding is that a higher standard of discourse is expected on HN.

Also, I rather suspect your tone would be different if you didn't happen to agree with the message. Please consider that such bias is not in keeping with the spirit of the free exchange of ideas or the core principles of open source.

> You're telling me y'all ACTUALLY found this webpage and scrolled through it organically?

Yes. This page is the official, primary means by which the Python team announces a new release of Python. That's kind of a big deal.

> Also, I rather suspect your tone would be different if you didn't happen to agree with the message.

I don't agree with the message. I think changing master to main is neutral at best. At best. Once again, I'm just not a baby. Maybe that's not the discourse standard people are used to, but it is language I think we can all understand.

A programming language is a tool. It should not have an official stance on political issues, whether you agree with it or not.

It doesn't have an official stance, you guys are just making assumptions and performing hyperbole for your own outrage.

Did they endorse the DNC and I missed it? No, they didn't. Seriously, again - come oooooon.

>Did they endorse the DNC and I missed it?

They did endorse BLM (the organization, along with its very specific message which is not related to the business of writing code). You seem to have missed the link I previously fed you:

https://discuss.python.org/t/the-psf-should-be-less-politica...

Which was in reference to:

https://x.com/ThePSF/status/1267591714925133825

Oh come on guys, this is silly. We're all gonna stop using a tool because they offhand mentioned something we don't agree with? I mean, these tools are developed by people - people have opinions.

I understand politics is very divisive, but why is everyone acting like a baby? Just move on. Who cares. Python is a language, who gives a fuck they included a meme about it's OK to be White? I'm convinced nobody even found this meme organically anyway, rather one person found it and then sent it around to all their like-minded friends so they can sit around and point and laugh and complain together. You're telling me y'all ACTUALLY found this webpage and scrolled through it organically? Come oooooon.

The spicy bit is that this is the first release that contained such a political message. And also the first one that is managed by the guy who started the mess of this post, too! Not exactly sure if he's the one who put it in there, but it's one heck of a coincidence.

It seems like the point is, you can see the same issue in very different ways. Did you read it from the bottom to the top? I was cringing until I got to the end and found the message to “Now read it bottom to top”. Still not saying it belongs in a technical document but it felt way less abrasive after reading it both directions.

That's kinda nuts, but kinda absolutely in line with all trends of the last 5 years. I remember similar shit happening in Linux community (the shit won, naturally).

But, anyway, who is the "Steering Council" and how come they have more influence than the 2 people who basically created python the language and python the community?

When Guido stopped being the sole leader (BDFL) he was replaced by the steering council which is elected and has the purpose of doing the following (Defined in PEP 13 which is the current governance model of Python. Right now Guido is a core developer at this time. See https://peps.python.org/pep-0013/#the-steering-council

That's pretty obvious. The question was, who are these people, specifically, and why they were chosen and given that much power. I mean, I can see the names, but while I don't have to be told who Tim Peters or Guido van Rossum are, I have no clue who these guys are and what their actual contributions are.

In line with the trends, as the grandparent said. People who claim tolerance are intolerant

I don't have a factual answer for you (be interested in one, too), only a cheek-in-tongue one: It's like politics, the only thing you have to do to get elected is to get people to vote for you. And often the vote is only among people who _want_ to be elected (and in a position of power), massively reducing the pool of good candidates.

> The question was, who are these people, specifically, and why they were chosen and given that much power.

They are core developers elected by an internal process among the developers. See PEP 13 for details: https://peps.python.org/pep-0013/#the-steering-council

> I have no clue who these guys are and what their actual contributions are.

Barry Warsaw (https://barry.warsaw.us) is another of the "old guard" who can be pictured standing next to Peters and GvR fairly easily. He gained the title of "Friendly Language Uncle For Life" (FLUFL), and has previously been the project lead for Mailman and lead maintainer for Jython. He was the release manager for Python 2.2 (as far as I can tell, the first time this position existed), 2.6 and 3.0, and shared the role for 2.3. His name is all over 2.x-era process documentation. Prior to GvR's actual retirement in 2018, there was an April Fools' Day announcement of his resignation in 2009, authored by Barry Warsaw and Brett Cannon. This was accompanied by a hidden option (still available!) which changes the `!=` syntax to `<>`. Refs: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4007289/ ; https://peps.python.org/pep-0401/ .

Emily Morehouse (https://emilyemorehouse.com/) was the PyCon co-chair for 2019 and chair for 2020 and 2021. She has done project management for Axios and mentoring for PyLadies (https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-emi...).

Gregory P. Smith has been a core dev since about 2003 and has notably worked on `hashlib` and `subprocess` (https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-gre...).

Pablo Galindo Salgado (https://github.com/pablogsal) was the release manager for 3.10 and 3.11, and Thomas Wouters was/is the release manager for 3.12 and 3.13. Wouters has also previously served as a PSF Board member and was a PSF founder (https://www.python.org/nominations/elections/2020-python-sof...).

Gregory P. Smith Emily Morehouse Barry Warsaw Thomas Wouter

I've worked with gps and twouter before at Google; they were two of the leaders of the python ecosystem. twouter is a highly technically skilled contributor- when I found a 2 bugs in the Python runtime, he was the person who helped me fix them (bug 1: RPC calls from C++ to Python delivered during interpreter shutdown caused crash, bug 2: importing the same library twice with two different names caused crash) upstream.

gps apparently is a core contributor to cpython but I he did mainly administrative work afaict when I was at Google. From what I can tell, gps is the primary instigator in this incident.

Barry Warsaw: was lead maintainer of jython, I think also involved in the guts of cpython for some time.

Emily Morehouse: I hadn't heard of her before but it looks like she is a core python developer: https://emilyemorehouse.com/blog/015-my-path-to-becoming-a-p... who implemented some key PEPs.

That's what happens when Googlers have power these days. They are so used to censorship being forced down their throats at Google that it seems super normal for them to do it everywhere.

There is an election process, and all core python team members vote on the SC (https://peps.python.org/pep-8105/#results) for a 1-year term.

Greg, Thomas, and Barry are all old guard (20+ years as core devs), Emily and Pablo are relatively more recent, but still have 5+ years as core devs and are I believe more actively doing python feature development. All of these folks have served on the steering council before, some for 3-4 years.

Guido has served on the SC before, but has been stepping back recently.

They suspended Tim Peters? That is insane.

The Python steering committee also threw the kitchen sink of accusations at him. IMO it speaks to character when you throw arguments like an adversarial lawyer. Not the kind of person you want to be around for work or life.

To be clear, the accusations in question came from the Code of Conduct Work Group; the Steering Council simply "acted on their recommendations".

I don't expect any positive changes if said Work Group becomes directly responsible for such disciplinary actions.

is the steering council able to remove messages without a recommendation? i think that if two "independent" groups have to cooperate then that's better than one group being able to act alone. now the question is how independent are these groups really. i saw another comment drawing that into question.

> It's very confusing.

I do very much like that repeatedly spouting right-wing-adjacent nonsense like "reverse racism" or "reverse sexism" has consequences, and that any attempts at defending such a person also has consequences.

What does reverse racism mean?

There exists an argument that people who are not white are, in fact, capable of saying or doing things which tend to discriminate against white people; and furthermore that such speech and action is harmful and morally offensive.

"reverse racism" is a term used by people who find that position disagreeable or inconvenient, to mislabel, misrepresent and mock it.

The argument is not at all "far right"; it's centrist, and obvious. But certain extremist identity-based ideologues have manage to sell that nonsense with their propaganda based on the label. Occasionally you will see people who don't know any better use the term unironically, because of the dominance its derogatory use has achieved; but serious opposition to so-called "progressive" identity politics does not actually use the term.

> why would this have violated community standards? Is there some rule about not mentioning "un-persons" or something?

Flags may be cast by anyone, and this will eventually result in automatic hiding - flags on Discourse are weighted according to the "trust level" of those raising them.

My guess is that people perceived this as a passive-aggressive objection to Tim Peters' suspension. It has definitely been permitted up until now to refer to this (although everyone seemed to be avoiding the name on principle), but there seems to be an expectation that people should "read the air" now and stop talking about it - hence posts like https://discuss.python.org/t/moderated-posts-are-no-longer-p... and https://discuss.python.org/t/pr-disaster-surrounding-recent-... .

> and sparking a call for a vote of no confidence in the council which did not succeed

The call was retracted, which is not surprising. The Steering Council isn't the root of the problem, anyway. That would be the Code of Conduct Work Group (https://www.python.org/psf/workgroups/#code-of-conduct-work-...), which is not elected (https://wiki.python.org/psf/ConductWG/Charter#Membership), has membership overlapping other important groups (4 of them are on the PSF Board of Directors - https://www.python.org/psf/board/#id3 - and Brett Cannon and Łukasz Langa are Discourse forum moderators) and enforces the Code of Conduct according to hidden rules that betray the neutrality of that document (https://policies.python.org/python.org/code-of-conduct/Enfor...) counter to the wishes of one of the original drafters of said document (https://discuss.python.org/t/why-i-am-withdrawing-fellowship... ; https://discuss.python.org/t/why-im-leaving-discuss-python-o... etc.).

It's also noteworthy that the Steering Council - consisting of 5 core devs - apparently also now requires a "communications liaison" (https://www.notion.so/46aec24028fd4e8dbdba003097c18b5b?pvs=2...) who gets a glowing write-up in official updates on the forum (such as https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-updates-for-ju...) - which are not posted by said liaison. I have no idea why this should be necessary, nor is there anything in PEP 13 (https://peps.python.org/pep-0013/) about this position existing. It seems that this person was selected entirely out-of-process.