For those who don't know the name, Tim Peters is the author of "The Zen of Python". He is the one who uniquely captured was Python is all about with this inspirational little poem:
The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!
The praise for Mr. Peters means that much more coming from you. Don't sell yourself short; your PyCon lectures have done an immense service along the same lines of "capturing what Python is all about", and Python would feel like a very different language without functional-programming builtins like `any` and `all`, not to mention the `itertools` standard library (among the many other contributions you list in your profile).
I have seen commentary by a few of them on social media - mostly, per my impression, vague expressions of annoyance at the stress supposedly caused by Code of Conduct enforcement (note that in the post announcing my ban, Mr. Langa disclosed an unusually high recent volume of forum flags: approximately one per moderator per day) and at people having opinions differing from their own.
> > "Dismissing unacceptable behavior of others as a “neurodivergent” trait"
> In the context of the bylayws change discussions, Tim detailed his relationship with a prickly core developer who was maniacal about a particular bit of stdlib code, whom he considered neurodivergent, and lamented that that person had been removed, because their code was top-notch. He then started a thread questioning if Python was accepting of such people. The accusation is accurate, except in the characterization of "unacceptable" perhaps. The characterizations certainly were not unacceptable to me.
Apart from my personal feelings about this, which are obviously 100% aligned with Toms, I find this particular case a bit bizarre. Where I work for, we have neurodiversity training, celebrate the neurodiversity day, and in general respect the topic a lot, making it clear that neurodiverse people actually belong here. So the actions of these folks seem at odd with something I consider the modern norm, that's really weird.
> Where I work for, we have neurodiversity training, celebrate the neurodiversity day, and in general respect the topic a lot, making it clear that neurodiverse people actually belong here.
Might I ask where this is? It's encouraging to hear, but it sounds to me like a relative rarity. Certainly the Python Code of Conduct (https://policies.python.org/python.org/code-of-conduct/), and the main Python website diversity statement (https://www.python.org/community/diversity/), are not the only places where I've seen a long list of "protected classes" which omits neurotype; and in over a decade of trying to have reasoned arguments (...) online with the champions of such policies, I have been very strongly left with the impression that, at best they are unaware of neurodiversity issues and at worst see "neurodivergence" as a way for nerds to make a fraudulent claim for sympathy.
To me, that tone carries across strongly in the point you highlight, as well as in the responses in Mr. Peters' thread (https://discuss.python.org/t/how-can-we-better-support-neuro...). (Note in particular Mr. Langa's use of the "missing stair" analogy - one which has been seen in several prior discussions in the Python community, coming from similarly politically aligned members. I don't know why, but the fact that this terminology was originally used to describe sexual predators in the BDSM community doesn't seem to bother any of them.)
A large UK-based company, tech department. And it wasn't just lip service - we had meetings with people sharing their personal experiences, including CTO and others. So I assumed it is (becoming) a norm.
There have been other bans of dubious merit, but this one hit a nerve because in many ways Tim Peters gave the Python core development team its soul.
He had playful and witty style backed by deep technical acumen. His little nudges provided the team with quiet leadership and direction over a quarter century.
One core developer (the mathematician) recently quit over this and said, "he was the best of us".
I think one of the hardest problems in community moderation is finding good moderators.
A moderator's job description involves outlining fault in other people's words and occasionally punishing them for it. That sort of thing is tedious to most people, but thrilling to some very emotionally unhealthy ones. Few people who want the job can be trusted with the power.
I fear the python steering council has been lost to people who don't have the maturity to talk through problems in a healthy way.
Fortunately, the Steering Council at least consists of annually re-elected members.
The same can't be said for the Code of Conduct Work Group, or most other Work Groups, or for Discourse forum moderators.
I actually can't find any documentation anywhere of the election process for the PSF Board of Directors, or anything about how Officers are selected. Not on psf.python.org, not on the PSF blog, not on Mr. Willamson's blog (as a former board member whose blog was recently shared on HN); not as a PEP (that only covers the Steering Council). All I know is that a few new members are elected annually, but not how long their terms are.
That is weird. They have a list of the results (https://www.python.org/nominations/elections/), lists of boards going back a few years (https://www.python.org/psf/board/), but no details. Presumably they post their official Bylaws/founding documents somewhere that they filed with the state, and it'd be in there?
FWIW diversity is important regardless of their website quality. Perfection is the enemy of improvement, IMHO.
The issue is not that wannabe moderators and "leaders" are merely immature. They are cunning activists and opportunists. The right approach is to throw out anyone who insists on co-opting an open software project to advance goals that are not directly related to the project's purpose. This is especially obvious when they start trying to censor or ban people over disagreements and opinions outside the scope of the project.
The way that Tim was treated was disgraceful. Definitely made me less likely to participate in the Python forums.
Edit - I should clarify that my main concern was the way that all of his alleged offences were collectively summarised into one long list of offences, making them all seem worse collectively. But as Chris McDonough explained in his post, each "offence" was either trivial in nature, or completely taken out of context and made to sound much worse than what it was.
I think the bottom line is that the PSF or whatever the US 501c3 is ends up losing credibility.
The decentralized nature of software means that the people, Guido Van, or Tim Peters, hold the power, not some legal entity and its bureocratic bylaws.
At least for now, there's more content available from https://tim-one.github.io/psf/ . I checked the repository - it's only a couple of days old, so a new effort. A few of the commits are by David Mertz, too, which is interesting. My own articles are linked, too, which of course I appreciate. (I still have more to write on the topic, but I've already fallen too far behind in writing things which aren't about the PSF.)
Readit News
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41212788 ["The Shameful Defenestration of Tim" by Chris McDonough]
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41515766 ["A Mess in the Python Community", lwn.net]
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41385546 ["A post by Guido van Rossum removed for violating Python community guidelines"]
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41314393 ["Calling for a Vote of No Confidence in the Python Steering Council"]
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41234180 ["Core Python developer suspended for three months"]
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41187470 ["Three month suspension for Python core developer"]
Can anyone point me to a detailed response from the other side? (Beyond their initial announcement, I mean.)
Experience tells me to hear both sides of a story before buying a pitchfork.
I have seen commentary by a few of them on social media - mostly, per my impression, vague expressions of annoyance at the stress supposedly caused by Code of Conduct enforcement (note that in the post announcing my ban, Mr. Langa disclosed an unusually high recent volume of forum flags: approximately one per moderator per day) and at people having opinions differing from their own.
Edit: since I was looking things up to assemble the above links - I notice that Ethan Furman has made a further complaint about Mr. Peters' treatment in absentia: https://discuss.python.org/t/soliciting-feedback-from-a-susp...
https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestr...
And this one struck me:
> > "Dismissing unacceptable behavior of others as a “neurodivergent” trait"
> In the context of the bylayws change discussions, Tim detailed his relationship with a prickly core developer who was maniacal about a particular bit of stdlib code, whom he considered neurodivergent, and lamented that that person had been removed, because their code was top-notch. He then started a thread questioning if Python was accepting of such people. The accusation is accurate, except in the characterization of "unacceptable" perhaps. The characterizations certainly were not unacceptable to me.
Apart from my personal feelings about this, which are obviously 100% aligned with Toms, I find this particular case a bit bizarre. Where I work for, we have neurodiversity training, celebrate the neurodiversity day, and in general respect the topic a lot, making it clear that neurodiverse people actually belong here. So the actions of these folks seem at odd with something I consider the modern norm, that's really weird.
Might I ask where this is? It's encouraging to hear, but it sounds to me like a relative rarity. Certainly the Python Code of Conduct (https://policies.python.org/python.org/code-of-conduct/), and the main Python website diversity statement (https://www.python.org/community/diversity/), are not the only places where I've seen a long list of "protected classes" which omits neurotype; and in over a decade of trying to have reasoned arguments (...) online with the champions of such policies, I have been very strongly left with the impression that, at best they are unaware of neurodiversity issues and at worst see "neurodivergence" as a way for nerds to make a fraudulent claim for sympathy.
To me, that tone carries across strongly in the point you highlight, as well as in the responses in Mr. Peters' thread (https://discuss.python.org/t/how-can-we-better-support-neuro...). (Note in particular Mr. Langa's use of the "missing stair" analogy - one which has been seen in several prior discussions in the Python community, coming from similarly politically aligned members. I don't know why, but the fact that this terminology was originally used to describe sexual predators in the BDSM community doesn't seem to bother any of them.)
A large UK-based company, tech department. And it wasn't just lip service - we had meetings with people sharing their personal experiences, including CTO and others. So I assumed it is (becoming) a norm.
He had playful and witty style backed by deep technical acumen. His little nudges provided the team with quiet leadership and direction over a quarter century.
One core developer (the mathematician) recently quit over this and said, "he was the best of us".
Sorry, who exactly are you referring to?
A moderator's job description involves outlining fault in other people's words and occasionally punishing them for it. That sort of thing is tedious to most people, but thrilling to some very emotionally unhealthy ones. Few people who want the job can be trusted with the power.
I fear the python steering council has been lost to people who don't have the maturity to talk through problems in a healthy way.
The same can't be said for the Code of Conduct Work Group, or most other Work Groups, or for Discourse forum moderators.
I actually can't find any documentation anywhere of the election process for the PSF Board of Directors, or anything about how Officers are selected. Not on psf.python.org, not on the PSF blog, not on Mr. Willamson's blog (as a former board member whose blog was recently shared on HN); not as a PEP (that only covers the Steering Council). All I know is that a few new members are elected annually, but not how long their terms are.
(But I can easily find a diversity statement.)
FWIW diversity is important regardless of their website quality. Perfection is the enemy of improvement, IMHO.
The Shameful Defenestration of Tim
https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestr...
Edit - I should clarify that my main concern was the way that all of his alleged offences were collectively summarised into one long list of offences, making them all seem worse collectively. But as Chris McDonough explained in his post, each "offence" was either trivial in nature, or completely taken out of context and made to sound much worse than what it was.
The decentralized nature of software means that the people, Guido Van, or Tim Peters, hold the power, not some legal entity and its bureocratic bylaws.