An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation

Whether you're making an intentional political statement or not is besides the point. That's the thing about something being intrinsic. Your intention doesn't subvert the fact.

To add to grotorea's already very good points in response to your boilerplate CLI program: you're writing it on a computer built by certain modes of production endorsed by interweaving political frameworks (industrialisation, neoliberalism, globalisation, capitalism, etc.) You're probably writing it in English which by the very fact of its use situates it as anglocentric, but also brings further attendant ideologies and assumptions with it about its uses/users. You're communicating about it over the internet (hopefully I don't need to explain the historical and contemporary ideological roots here.) I want to be clear that these aren't criticisms, but trying to chase some purity of intent by ignoring them doesn't make them go away. All of your actions are governed by and in response to these structures and unless you try to understand them, you'll always take them for granted.

A wonderful facet of Hacker News is the ability to converse with the community-enforced expectation of being taken in good faith. But every now and then I see these snarky, facile replies and I wonder if I'm using the same website as them, and if we're actually trying to make this place better together after all.

HN comment threads go off into tangents all the time. Any link that draws into the hundreds of comments is going to have many tangents, and this one was no exception before I even came to it. Your account was created in 2014, it puzzles me that this isn't something you're well used to already.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that projects surrounding historically privileged people would use it in ways to impact less fortunate or rich communities.

This would be a great time for another language to swoop in and get good PR. Since Python doesn't appear to be a globally targeted language...

There's politics in any organization but this story has me wondering what other communities get fucked by misleading messaging about funding.

On top of that, the advice people give, "be more careful" admits that the people issuing grants were not timely or responsive and instead pretends the moral onus is on the victim.

How very... Western.

There's a really weird reversal happening here where there are a group of people who don't like LGBTQ identity, and a group of people who think it's fine, and the group that doesn't like LGBTQ identity passed laws saying they could be put in prison for life...

But somehow it's the people pointing out that the environment isn't safe who are getting accused of being against pluralism? And not the government that is literally saying, "we reserve the right to prosecute and imprison you if you come here and we don't like your identity/politics."

Taking politics out of Python should mean that whoever you are and whatever you believe and whatever your identity is, you are at least safe at a Python conference because Python conferences are not the places where we debate identity, they're places where we talk about Python. So it is not LGTBQ people who are injecting politics into Python when they point out that they can be imprisoned for their identity, that they can't go to a Python conference and just focus on the tech. It is not them who are abandoning the notion of "live and let live together."

If this was a conversation about avoiding Tanzania just because some of the attendees might be anti-gay, sure, maybe we could talk about pluralism and decorum. But that's not at all the conversation. You want to take politics out of the equation, politics is the thing that throws people in prison for an aspect of their identity that they don't even control. Politics is the thing that decides that people going to a tech conference need to be on their best behavior to avoid being prosecuted by the government.

Taking politics out of Python and embracing pluralism means saying, "if somebody wants to give a technical talk in drag then you don't get to complain about it as long as the tech talk is good." You can dislike it, you can have a political disagreement about it, but a global, officially sanctioned Python conference should be open to everyone. Of course it's not the fault of the organizers that their government won't allow them to put on a conference that meets that criteria. But it's also not the fault of the Python Software Foundation, they don't have any special input into Tanzania's laws.

And while it's definitely important to try and be as inclusive as possible to global contributors and to recognize that they are not their government, ultimately if you want to have an apolitical inclusive conference for people from all walks of life, the Tanzania government will not allow you to do that. The Tanzania government (not the African organizers and not the PSF) is saying that the political will rule the technical and the Tanzania government is saying that a politically pluralistic conference is not allowed in Tanzania. The Python Software Foundation is simply recognizing that fact.

Of course, if the Tanzania government wants to allow for a pluralistic apolitical tech conference, it could at the very least pass explicit legal guarantees for attendees that they will be at no risk for their orientation or gender identity. But I suspect it's not willing to do that for a tech conference, and I suspect (however good their intentions are) that the organizers do not have the political sway necessary to get that kind of concession from the government.