A relevant tweet from 2016 (https://x.com/jessicamckellar/status/737299461563502595):

> Hello from your @PyCon Diversity Chair. % PyCon talks by women: (2011: 1%), (2012: 7%), (2013: 15%), (2014/15: 33%), (2016: 40%). #pycon2016

Increased diversity in communities usually comes from active outreach work. PyCon's talk selection process starts blinded.

If 300 people submit talks and 294 are men, then 98% of talks will likely be from men.

If 500 people submit talks and 394 are men, then ~79% will likely be by men.

Outreach to encourage folks to apply/join/run/etc. can make a big difference in the makeup of applicants and the makeup of the end results. Bucking the trend even during just one year can start a snowball effect that moves the needle further in future years.

The world doesn't run on merit. Who you know, whether you've been invited in to the club, and whether you feel you belong all affect where you end up. So unusually homogenous communities (which feel hard for outsiders to break into) can arise even without deliberate discrimination.

Organizations like the PSF could choose to say "let's avoid outreach work and simply accept the status quo forever", but I would much rather see the Python community become more diverse and welcoming over time.

I think we played an important role in the community. In our mission we stated we wanted to help bring "equity to STEM education."

In 2025, according to the current admin's stance on "DEI," my robotics team would not be able to receive grants without risk of being sued. It's plainly obvious the line is not drawn at restraining "overly progressive policies" - it's just arbitrarily placed so the govt can pick and choose the winners based on allegiance.

It's a shame that folks with a strong moral fiber are now punished for wanting to help their communities.

On the other hand, the federal government has gone after law firms that are not actually in violation of law and forced settlements due to their DEI programs, so you can't actually trust that you won't be hassled. Additionally, that you won't at minimum have the money clawed back, even if the claims are meritless, as the administration has done on Congressionally appropriated funds repeatedly as part of DOGE efforts.

Regardless of how you, as an individual, might feel about "DEI," imposing onerous political terms on scientific grants harms everyone in the long term.

Also, this is a golden opportunity for multi-billion dollar tech companies to also do the same and match or double the grant money in support of PSF! Google, AWS, Microsoft, anyone?

> I was one of the board members who voted to reject this funding - a unanimous but tough decision. I’m proud to serve on a board that can make difficult decisions like this.

Kudos to Simon and the rest of the board. Accepting that money would be more than a strategic mistake, it'd be an existential danger to the PSF itself.

(Emphasis mine)

I'm curious if any lawyer folks could weigh in as to whether this language means that the entire sentence requires the mentioned programs to be "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws." If so, one might argue that a "DEI program" was not in violation of a Federal anti-discrimination law.

Obviously no one would want to have to go to court and this likely would be an unacceptable risk.

How does the legalese parse here? Does "violation of Federal anti-descrimination laws" apply to the whole thing or just the "discriminatory equity ideology" portion of the statement?

I ask, because being in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws would be a problem whether or not you took the money.

And for those who want to fund the security of one of the few remaining independent foundation-led package ecosystems:

https://www.python.org/psf/donations/

https://www.python.org/sponsors/application/

(Not an American.)

  > The PSF is a relatively small organization, operating with an annual budget of around $5 million per year, with a staff of just 14.

How many trillions of dollars depend on Python?

Yes, I mean trillion. Those market caps didn't skyrocket on nothing. A lot of ML systems run on Python. A lot of ML systems are first implemented in Python. Even with more complicated backends a Python layer is usually available, and used. A whole lot of other stuff depends on Python too, but the AI part is obvious.

This is the weird part about our (global![0]) economics that I just don't get. We'll run billions of dollars in the red for a decade or more to get a startup going yet we can't give a million to these backbones? Just because they're open source? It's insane! If we looked at projects like this as a company we'd call their product extremely successful and they'd be able to charge out the wazoo for it. So the main difference is what? That it's open source? That by being open source it doesn't deserve money? I think this is a flaw we probably need to fix. In the very least I want those devs paid enough that they don't get enticed by some large government entity trying to sneak in backdoors or bugs.

[0] it's not just the US, nor is it just capitalist countries. You can point me at grants but let's get honest, $5m is crazy low for their importance. They're providing more than 1000x that value in return.

[side note] I do know big companies often contribute and will put a handful of people on payroll to develop, bug hunt, etc. But even if we include that I'm pretty sure the point still stands. I'm open to being wrong though, I don't know the actual numbers

[P.S.S] seems to parallel our willingness to fund science. Similarly people will cry "but what is the value" from a smartphone communicating over the Internet, with the monetary value practically hitting them in the face.

- Further, violation of this term gave the NSF the right to “claw back” previously approved and transferred funds. This would create a situation where money we’d already spent could be taken back, which would be an enormous, open-ended financial risk.

They're saying the terms give the Trump administration what's essentially a "kill the PSF" button. Which they may want to use for any number of arbitrary reasons. Maybe the PSF runs a conference with a trans speaker, or someone has to be ousted for being openly racist. If it gets the attention of right wing media that's the end.

The "just comply with the law" people are being extremely naive. There can be no assumption of good faith here.

Turning down money is the easiest thing in the world, if you have the fortitude. I think a lot of organisations don't.

If you want to buy cyber security, just do that. Linking cybersecurity payments to social issues reduces how much cybersecurity you can get. Sometimes you can find win-win-win scenarios. There are values that are worth enforcing as a baseline. But you always pay a price somewhere.

Anyway, I signed up to be a PSF member.

Grant writing and the gigantic infrastructure for checking that the researchers are doing exactly what you've approved is an enormous burden on progress.

> If we accepted and spent the money despite this term, there was a very real risk that the money could be clawed back later. That represents an existential risk for the foundation since we would have already spent the money!

This is the real problem. It's not about DEI really. It's the same problem as so much else this year: the US government is currently wildly unpredictable and doing business with such an entity is a liability.

DEI has always been a weird thing because half the people supposedly doing it were always just trying to curry favor with people in positions of power who supported it, and now that the winds have shifted they're equally happy to curry favor by getting rid of it. They signal virtue or vice depending on how virtuous or vicious the leader.

I think the PSF actually wants to do the right thing, which in the current perverse environment makes them more likely to be targeted. The wisest move is not to play.

As a Python user, I do wish that the PSF wouldn't institute DEI policies on their own volition; but ultimately they're a private organization that I have no relationship with, and they're entitled to make political decisions differently than I would. But in terms of receiving taxpayer money, I'm glad that these US federal government grant rules are putting real financial pressure on them.

Time to amp up my Xmas donation.

  do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.

It seems like a win-win to me

Given this, I could easily see work supporting the creation of less biased models being used as an attack vector. They made the right call.

Essentially that means for every dollar not spent on, say, the PSF; then an other organization willing to denounce DEI is going to get these $1.5M.

I fear less for the opportunity loss to _proper_ organizations, and worry that activist anti-DEI/partisan organizations are artificially going to get a massive funding increase.

In that setup, it may be the lesser of two evils for the PSF to accept that grant, if only to deny a more partisan organization to get this funding.

It's shocking how fast this administration has gotten institutions to abandon their beliefs, and ones that don't should be rewarded.

I mean is OSS effective despite the funding problem, or if we gave every maintainer a million quid, would they all stop making tough decisions ?

I suspect that it’s the organisations that define the decision quality - but that’s just a hunch.

That way, this sort of situation would result in the revocation of the python license, instead of the grant proposal.

(this is a rough cut - I know there are other posts left in the thread that arguably belong here, but this time I'm in a bit of a rush)

(please, everyone, you can make substantive points thoughtfully but do so within the guardrails at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html - avoid the generic-indignant-flamey-snarky-namecalley-hardcore-battley sectors of internet discourse - we're trying for something different here and we need everyone to help with that)

Anti-DEI clauses push out under-represented contributors, and the lost funding delays protections millions rely on.

Shame on the decision-makers who made that tradeoff.

So they signed the amendments and spent the money...

* IRS audit into the PSF's 501c3 status

* if the PSF has received federal funds in the past, they'll probably be targeted by the DOJ's "Civil Rights Fraud Initiative"

* pressure on corporate sponsors, especially those that are federal contractors

Striving for equality according to MAGA is discrimination. Make systematic racism and sexism great again like it’s <1950s?

> NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and recover all funds if recipients, during the term of this award, operate any program in violation of Federal antidiscriminatory laws or engage in a prohibited boycott.

So there's no plausible way that agreeing to these terms would have contractually bound PSF in any way that they were not already bound by statute. Completely silly ideological posturing to turn down the money.

Did your lawyer say otherwise? Interested to understand

> We were forced to withdraw our application and turn down the funding, thanks to new language that was added to the agreement requiring us to affirm that we "do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws."

> Our legal advisors confirmed that this would not just apply to security work covered by the grant - this would apply to all of the PSF's activities.