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Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

discuss.python.org

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Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#161

Post by simonw »

bbor wrote: post #134
simonw wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Also makes me wonder if they still have a Microsoft employee running the PSF… always thought that was odd.) You might be confusing the Python Steering Council - responsible for leadership of Python language development - with the PSF non-profit there. The PSF is lead by a full-time executive director who has no other affiliation, plus an elected board of unpaid volunteer directors (I'm one of them). Microsoft empl…

Wow, I didn't know you got a spot on the board, that's a great choice on their part! Thanks for giving your time. Yes, I was talking about Wages -- the day-to-day is surely complex, but I'm sure you'd agree that the president of the board is ultimately "above" the chief executive if push ever came to shove, at least on paper. I will grant that I used "running", which is quite unclear in hindsight! "Responsible for" o…

Us board members voted to put Dawn in that position.

The position doesn't have much additional power at all - the chair spends a little more time with the executive director and gets to set the agenda for the board meetings, but board actions still require a vote from the board.

If we felt like an employee of a specific company was abusing their position on the PSF board we would take steps to address that. Thankfully I've seen no evidence of that from anyone during my time on the board.

If anything it's the opposite: board members are very good about abstaining from votes that their employer might have an interest in.

Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#162

Post by skeledrew »

exceptione wrote: post #95
shadowgovt wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python has a terseness that is hard to rival. I think that was a major selling point: its constructs and use of whitespace mean that a valid Python program looks pretty close to the pseudo-code one might write to reason out the problem before writing it in another language.

I doubt that this is the selling point. Imho it is nothing special compared to Haskell, F# and the likes.

It's a huge selling point for me and many I know who knows it. Nothing like code that you can read like you're reading a book/article.

Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#163

Post by jborean93 »

iwontberude wrote: post #156
jborean93 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They refused to invest in packaging to the extent that a separate company (astral) had to do it for them uv didn't just happen in a vacuum, there has been lots of investment in the Python packaging ecosystem that has enabled it (and other tools) to try and improve the shortcomings of Python and packaging. There's PEP 518 [1] for build requirements, PEP 600 [2] for manylinux wheels, PEP 621 [3] for pyproject.toml, P…

It seemed pipenv is more than sufficient, why should I use uv?

That's the thing, you don't have to :) While I think uv is a great tool and highly recommend it, you are more than welcome to use any of the other build backends or package management tools that fit your workstyle. By having these packaging PEPs (amongst) others, the ecosystem has been able to try out different approaches and most likely over time will consolidate on specific ones that work better than the others.

Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#164

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

iwontberude wrote: post #156
jborean93 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They refused to invest in packaging to the extent that a separate company (astral) had to do it for them uv didn't just happen in a vacuum, there has been lots of investment in the Python packaging ecosystem that has enabled it (and other tools) to try and improve the shortcomings of Python and packaging. There's PEP 518 [1] for build requirements, PEP 600 [2] for manylinux wheels, PEP 621 [3] for pyproject.toml, P…

It seemed pipenv is more than sufficient, why should I use uv?

Anecdata, but uv served as a very good packaging mechanism for a Python library I had to throw on an in extremis box, one that is not connected to the Internet in any way, and one where messing with the system Python was verboten and Docker was a four-letter word.

Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#166

Post by skeledrew »

simianwords wrote: post #17
reactordev wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So add mypy to your pre-commit

All this but none of the performance benefits.

I'd say most of us who prefer Python (a pretty significant number given it's the most popular language out there) don't care that much about performance, as today's machines are pretty fast and the main bottlenecks aren't in the language itself anyway. What we care about is usability/friendliness so we ourselves can iterate quickly.

Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#168

Post by nikanj »

Internal forecasts indicate Anthropic’s annualized revenue run-rate could be between about $20 billion and $26 billion in 2026. Let's shoot for the middle, $23 billion

According to multiple articles, Anthropic expects to reduce its cash burn to around one-third of revenue in 2026.

This implies total spending is roughly revenue + cash burn ≈ $23 billion + $7.7 billion ≈ $30.7 billion

When you divide the total spending to the length of the whole year, $1.5 million would sustain Anthropic for roughly 0.43 hours, or about 26 minutes.

Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#169

Post by webology »

jacobian wrote: post #153
bbor wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I didn't know you got a spot on the board, that's a great choice on their part! Thanks for giving your time. Yes, I was talking about Wages -- the day-to-day is surely complex, but I'm sure you'd agree that the president of the board is ultimately "above" the chief executive if push ever came to shove, at least on paper. I will grant that I used "running", which is quite unclear in hindsight! "Responsible for" o…

> I'm sure you'd agree that the president of the board is ultimately "above" the chief executive if push ever came to shove, at least on paper. That is not true of the PSF, nor of many (most?) other US nonprofits. Not on paper, and not practically speaking. The director reports to the board , but officers have little to no unitary power. You can go read the PSF’s bylaws if you like, and if you do you’ll see that offi…

Nodding along with everything you wrote here, but one minor point for anyone who might read the bylaws and get confused. https://www.python.org/psf/bylaws/

> Section 5.15. Limits on Co-affiliation of Board Members. No more than one quarter (1/4) of the members of the Board of Directors may share a common affiliation as defined in Section 5.14.

The PSF allows three board members to share an affiliation, 13 seats * 0.25 ~= 3.25.

BTH, that's one too many, and I helped write/recommend the original language. When I was on the board, three felt like too many, even though everyone was wonderful, and it was Google, not Microsoft, that hit the limit.

The DSF (Django Software Foundation) recently adopted a two-person limit, which I recommend more boards consider.

Re: Anthropic invests $1.5M in the Python Software Foundation

#170

Post by nedbat »

nikanj wrote: post #168

Internal forecasts indicate Anthropic’s annualized revenue run-rate could be between about $20 billion and $26 billion in 2026. Let's shoot for the middle, $23 billion According to multiple articles, Anthropic expects to reduce its cash burn to around one-third of revenue in 2026. This implies total spending is roughly revenue + cash burn ≈ $23 billion + $7.7 billion ≈ $30.7 billion When you divide the total spending…

It does seem small at Anthropic scale. But instead of faulting them for contributing "so little", maybe we can point to the thousands of large companies that are doing nothing.
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