An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation • Hacker News Board

Re: An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation

#181

Post by dijit » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 1:32 PM UTC

Planktonne wrote: post #169

tbrake wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old "everything is politics if you really think about it" gambit, eh?

Not really a gambit so much as a fact.

I can pick my nose and it's not a political statement. I just needed to pick my nose.

I can make a cli tool to deploy something faster and with the boilerplate logging/monitoring.

What political stance am I taking? Do you think I intentionally made one?

Or is this the same as "silence is violence"- by NOT making a statement that I am making a statement?

Honestly, it's exhausting. I just want to help where I can personally and have fun, it's not deeper than that.

Re: An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation

#182

Post by _cenw » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 1:32 PM UTC

ploum wrote: post #163

_cenw wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This looks to me like the Western behaviour where they sanction the whole country to death because they don't agree with policies of people in power. If your policies put people at risk, limit to participation is a natural consequence. There is no conspiracy here. >I am an African. And I live in a country where such laws targeting LGBTQ has been enacted. FYI, Most people here have no idea what LGBTQ means and those…

You are perfectly right that asking people to not care about the laws of a country is problematic. For personal safety and also as a moral stand point. But that should not be a reason to not fund conferences in those countries, conferences which are a way to learn, to discover new things. What do you think about conferences organizers, of every country, having to put on their website a little explanation of the laws…

Every place is a tradeoff. The US can be inaccessible through sheer travel cost too.

And it is absolutely true that it is a western double standard. Football tournaments in gulf states and all.

I was more upset the top comment in this thread is "shitting on human rights is just a difference of opinion" apologetics.

Re: An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation

#183

Post by jlg23 » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 1:33 PM UTC

I think the problem is also that a lot of committees are too detached from some of the groups they deal with.

I once was invited, as a member of a European drug policy group, to a FSF conference in London with the aim to get more grassroots organisations to use FOSS - flights and hotels paid for by the FSF. When there, we were informed that we could later send our receipts for hotels and flights to the chair of FSF Europe to get reimbursed just a few weeks later. If not for some very generous attendants who lived in London, a lot of people would not have had a place to sleep; I personally paid for a few return flights so people were not stranded in the UK. First: grassroot activists usually don't have any sponsors or disposable income. Second: the takeaway message "use Linux, use Firefox" could have been sent instead of the invitations and people could have learned the same, spent that time on working for their cause and finally have saved themselves from a precarious situation. Third: The guy in charge spent much more gossipping about RMS at the paid for meals than on the announced content of the conference. Bad style, especially since some attendants just had spent much more productive time with RMS a few weeks before (and probably still tried hard to get the images of him clipping his toe nails during the meetup out of their head - at least I did).

Re: An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation

#184

Post by richrichie » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

throwaway290 wrote: post #153

zartusht wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> No one is sanctioning Israel for ethnic cleansing, textbook settler colonialism and apartheid going on since 1948. Bad example since Jews are generally the ones who were getting cleansed. They were evicted by extreme Christians, then murdered by Nazi Germans (remember when US and Canada did not accept a shipful of Jews fleeing gas chambers so they had to go back and die?) and 1948 is when Arab League attacked the n…

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Re: An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation

#185

Post by gangstead » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

dual_dingo wrote: post #128

Maybe it's my experience from working in grant driven academia, but applying for a grant 4 months before you need the money and then complaining because it took three short months to get a decision is ridiculous. Applying later than a year in advance is too late.

At Strange Loop this year during the keynote the organizer said he was usually signing the contract for the hosting venue 2 years in advance. I'm not saying a first year 200 person conference has to plan as far out as an established X,000 person conference, but 4 months out is cutting it close. I'd suspect all first year conferences are very chaotic as the organizers learn to go from 0 to 1 so good for them for pulling it off.

It's time to start working on next year's conference and grant proposal.

Re: An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation

#186

Post by jzb » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 1:35 PM UTC

JonAtkinson wrote: post #80

Some thoughts on this from my perspective as a white, European, who was graciously invited to speak at DjangoCon Africa. I am not involved at all with the PSF, but my company has given the PSF money in the past. I think that I could sense the slight uncertainty about the conference, and the post above had made plain why. Considering what more could have been done if that uncertainty was resolved more quickly, the PSF…

What strikes me most about this is that, apparently by the timeline described in the open letter, the conference organizers planned the event with the expectation they'd get funding and asked for the funding fewer than five months before the event. That seems like extremely poor planning from my perspective.

Maybe that's normal for events given money by PSF, I dunno, but "we've already decided to do this so hurry up and say yes now or it's your fault" doesn't seem entirely reasonable to me. It is, unfortunately, something I've run into time and again, with community driven events.

Re: An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation

#187

Post by ttyprintk » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 1:36 PM UTC

TOMDM wrote: post #170

> At a meeting earlier this year, the PSF expressed concern that barely 16% of grants go to African communities. The continent of Africa makes up 17.89% of the world's population (based on recent UN estimates), well within the margin of error of that 16% allocation I'd expect. Am I missing something? Are there country's that the PSF doesn't work with at all that would skew this?

Yes, last year something like 1% went to Asia.

Re: An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation

#188

Post by throwaway290 » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 1:36 PM UTC

richrichie wrote: post #184

throwaway290 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one is sanctioning Israel for ethnic cleansing, textbook settler colonialism and apartheid going on since 1948. Bad example since Jews are generally the ones who were getting cleansed. They were evicted by extreme Christians, then murdered by Nazi Germans (remember when US and Canada did not accept a shipful of Jews fleeing gas chambers so they had to go back and die?) and 1948 is when Arab League attacked the n…

[flagged]

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Re: An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation

#189

Post by arp242 » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 1:36 PM UTC

niam wrote: post #168

arp242 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That site mostly just looks at legal protections, which don't necessarily say all that much about the "facts on the ground". It also has a few opinion polls, but I don't rate those all that much either. And there can be huge variations within countries, and nuances in what is and isn't considered "bad". There are 61 million people in Tanzania, and it's three times the size of Germany in terms of surface area. It's a…

Vibes on the ground are not fact. Actionable law is. I agree with the people saying that this is in-effect a wholesale rejection of conferences in Africa, and that we should be mindful of that and work on a compromise. But how is it sensible to expect organizations to act on so-called "facts on the ground"? If those facts haven't already been leveraged to meaningfully affect policy, then there's a burdening question…

> Vibes on the ground are not fact. Actionable law is.

Is the law actionable? Is it enforced? What do the courts do? How does the police act? There's a million factors that radically change what "the law" says.

Weed is illegal in the Netherlands. Always has been. Never been legalized. Going by the "facts" of the law would lead to some views of the country that do not align with any sort of meaningful reality.

> But how is it sensible to expect organizations to act on so-called "facts on the ground"?

If you don't know the reality of the situation then maybe you shouldn't act at all because you're ignorant about the entire thing?

I'm ignorant on this topic too; don't really know anything about Tanzania. But I'm also not claiming things about it, or think I know anything meaningful from ten seconds of scanning a website.

Re: An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation

#190

Post by hobofan » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 1:37 PM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #70

This is probably a silly question, but why did they plan the conference and set a date before they knew they had funding? Wouldn't it make more sense to confirm the grant first, and then start planning the event? The letter comes off as pretty entitled. My guess is that while there may be some unconscious bias at play here, there is also probably groundwork that could have been better laid. Perhaps European organizer…

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a chicken-and-egg problem where the funding application also has to contain a planned date and venue.

As it reads from the letter, it does seem like they handed in their application 3 months before the event. That seems like quite short notice and I would have expected ~6 months before the event, especially if there is no certainty/pre-commitment that the grant will go through.