An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation | Hacker News Reader

An Open Letter to the Python Software Foundation

pythonafrica.blogspot.com

307 pointsVinnl359 comments

My guess is that this has much to do with how much they get out of Africa. It seems like they don't see the benefit of funding those conferences.

About LBGTQ

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.

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 who do don't give a damn. Those leading the making of laws and noise making are just populists after their bread. [These are facts, hoping they still matter]

If you feel so strong about attending the conference, no one is going to ask your sexual orientation at the airport. Tourists are coming in everyday. Qatar has just hosted the world cup, how many LGBTQ people were jailed? If you don't feel safe, just skip the conference or attend online.

You know very well that coders are among the most reserved people on earth, why punish them for their government rules?

I hate posturing. I thought this kind of behaviour is to be left to politicians and 'national security' advisers.

Will the world ever go back to reality?

Looking at the map of the "LGBT rights by country or territory"[0] it is also not clear to me where people would suggest that the conferences be held. Zanzibar seems like one of the few places that would work, along with Botswana, and a few others. Some of the other countries that might work have completely different safety issue, regardless of your sexual orientation.

I think realistically, someone has the well meant opinion that these conferences should only be held in places where everyone can feel completely safe, and then just completely ignores reality. The unfortunate result is an effectual ban on any meetings in places like Africa or the Middle East, which is equally unreasonable and excluding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_by_country_or_terr...

Based on that map, South Africa would seem to be the best choice

South Africa is great except they have rolling blackouts(load shedding) and can be somewhat unsafe. Don't get me wrong, I was there for 3 months and didn't experience any problems, except one time when I was parking at an almost empty beach and my car didn't lock when I pushed the button on the remote. But I could definitely see a bunch of less savvy folks coming in with a bunch of apple goods, flashing them openly in the wrong place and something bad happening.

The rolling blackouts would also probably be pretty annoying though.

I don't think is unreasonable at all. Anyone can do a conference wherever, the PSF just don't want to sponsor conferences in places under those conditions

But this is exactly like sanctioning a country ruled by an oppressive regime because the regime is oppressive. You're just punishing the people who are already oppressed!

There are two positions the PSF can take:

1. Python evangelism is about the tech and is not an endorsement of whoever organize conferences, even if is in nazi Germany.

2. Giving money to a conference IS an endorsement of whoever organize it, so it must comply with the morals of the PSF board and biggest backers.

In hindsight, (1) seems more fair, but because the PSF is about politics and not tech, is not surprising they will always choose (2).

> If you don't feel safe, just skip the conference or attend online.

Well, PSF is not feeling safe about the conference and are skipping it.

Very well. Just give people a reason and they move on. We wouldn't be here today

If that was the case, they could have said no 5 months ago and the organizers would have had time to find alternate funding or do the conference online. Stonewalling people for a few months just because you can is a dick move.

> will the world ever go back to reality ?

Probably not, identity groups all over the world have been brought into direct conflict over limited resources thanks to new communications technology shrinking the world.

LGBTQ is a very powerful political movement in America.

> 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 who do don't give a damn. Those leading the making of laws and noise making are just populists after their bread. [These are facts, hoping they still matter]

>If you feel so strong about attending the conference, no one is going to ask your sexual orientation at the airport. Tourists are coming in everyday. Qatar has just hosted the world cup, how many LGBTQ people were jailed? If you don't feel safe, just skip the conference or attend online.

Bullshit.

You are asking people to be invisible, when that's not practical or possible a lot of the time. You are just saying people wouldn't be offended if they don't have the information to be offended. That is not remotely the same as safety.

Case in point: I'm visibly trans, I don't have a toggle for my appearance. I'd be turned around the border in most gulf states.

Also, Quatar used the World Cup to crack down on their domestic gay population by (yes this is real) catfishing them, posing as foreigners looking to hook up. So to answer your question: A whole lot of them got jailed.

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 of their country.

Each explanation would be something:

"In our country, the law forbid XXX. We are very sorry for the people concerned by this law and we are sad about those laws. We would ensure that the conference space is a safe space but they should be aware of those rules still apply in the whole country.

In every case, always choose safety. We are missing you, we hope to have the chance to meet you in another time.".

I feel like installing a tradition of such a disclaimer for every tech conference in the world would:

1. Force people to acknowledge issues in their own country (instead of minimizing them). And I guess every country has its own problem.

2. Show support for the victims of those laws and, indirectly, showing supports for the victims in their own country

3. Advance the cause, change mentality. It forces locals and politicians to be confronted with the fact that international visitors (which every country is trying to attract) may disagree to the point of not coming to the conference.

4. It would be nearly risk-free for conference organizer as it could also be defended as a polite way to ask attendees to respect the law.

even mentioning politically sensitive topics is not risk free in some places.

expecting this from every conference could potentially put conference organizers at risk for criticizing their local laws or culture.

at best this information can be shared by global institutions. so the PSF could issue their funding accompanied by such a statement

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.

I mean, sports organizations are widely regarded as horribly corrupt and more-or-less evil by anybody who cares about this kind of stuff and looks into it (I think?). It isn’t really a double standard unless you expect the whole “West” to share an opinion.

There's a HUGE difference between:

"Our country taxes alcohol stupidly high, and nudity is 100% OK"

And

"Women are second class citizens and owned by their male counterparts. And we put gay people and trans people to death."

As much as I hate saying it, it doesn't matter who the individuals in a country are, and how tolerant they are. The laws by the ruling power are what you have to follow.

And fuck no going to a country based on Muslim Sharia. I know their book, and their brand of hate. Call it 'islamophobia', but I'd also be enslaved or executed if I stepped foot on their territories.

Last time I checked, as an apostate, I'd have a death penalty waiting for me in many countries that operate under such religious laws.

Also, if they know I am an apostate, and they ask me that at the border, I'll have to choose between death because I am an apostate, and death by a likely more painful method because I am an apostate and I also lied to a customs officer.

> But that should not be a reason to not fund conferences in those countries

How would you feel about the PSF (or any other society you sponsor) helping conferences in places you'd not be able to attend because you simply would not be safe there? I understand there are good reasons for funding conferences in countries that would be hostile to many PSF members, because not all people who'd attend to such conferences agree with the intolerance (by law or by custom).

> "In our country, the law forbid XXX"

I would not wish the PSF to be seen as supportive of such behavior.

" helping conferences in places you'd not be able to attend because you simply would not be safe there? "

I’m avoiding visiting lot of countries where I know that people like me are not safe. Sometimes to the astonishment of my family "but, seriously, there’s no risk. It is a touristic country". Yep, but they put people I feel connected to in jail. I will not go. But I would be glad if they have more hacker-type events.

One country where I don’t feel really safe anymore is USA (at least some part of it). Lot of people cannot attend conferences because they can’t enter USA. Yet, it probably makes sense to still fund conferences in the USA.

So why not everywhere else, even if some people cannot attend?

> How would you feel about the PSF (or any other society you sponsor) helping conferences in places you'd not be able to attend because you simply would not be safe there?

I would feel very good, because those places are often ignored from such events. A conference in a place is done first for the locals. Saying to all of africa "sorry you can't have a conference this year because the westerners that have 10 a year would not be able to come" is what would make me feel bad. Add on top of that coming to western conferences from africa is usually way too expensive for the median income there. Oh and travel issue for passports when getting into the US or Europe.

I've been reading this whole thread as "westerners being entitled to go to an african conference, run by and for people in africa"

I agree with you, but conversely, the organisers shouldn't feel entitled to Western funding either, in that case.

Is the PSF western "by design" or "de facto", the latter being the foundation having "accidentally" only western people on board? In theory the PSF should be worldwide with people from everywhere. Otherwise we should call it "EU+US PSF".

However the reality is, it is staffed by westerners and funded by western companies. So it's a de-facto western foundation.

Of course, it's not an accident, but let's not kid ourselves: Python was originally developed by a Westerner, in the West, and the vast majority of PSF funding also originates in the West. To look at that history and then be surprised that it's run by Westerners seems silly to me.

> In theory the PSF should be worldwide with people from everywhere.

Why?

I never said being surprised. I think we agree on the state we are in.

As for why, well, precisely to avoid the bias at hand here. The tech, despite originating from the west, is what it is: a tech. Especially something as ubiquitous as Python, which is far from being scoped to the west.

We go to great lengths for equity in such boards, promoting openness and such: more women, more LGBT+, people of color, ... But even black people that are included are most often than not are afro-americans living in the west, and not africans living in africa. We always forget about foreign users that are also a minority, except a remote one we can shrug off, unless they are vocal enough.

That said, I acknowledge it may not be possible, the foundation likely being an US nonprofit, so integrating foreigners in the board may be extremely difficult.

> the foundation likely being an US nonprofit, so integrating foreigners in the board may be extremely difficult.

As far as I know, it's not a problem. At first glance, PSF board and officers bios appear fairly international currently.

A foreign controlled, foreign benefitting organization that sends nearly all contributions to foreign organizations might not be tax exempt in the US, but that doesn't sound like the PSF.

> Is the PSF western "by design" or "de facto"

Since diversity and inclusivity are core values, I'll dodge the question and just say it's inclusive by design.

I am not asking anyone to be invisible. I am just saying we need to go back to reality and see things the way they are supposed to be.

How long ago were the LGBTQ people also at risk in the Western world? I understand organisations like PSF have their codes to abide by and safety of attendees is and should be a priority.

But if your main mission is to promote python in the whole world. It's not impossible to issue an advisory that LGBTQ people are advised to do this or that about a given location. Python coders have nothing to do with politicians.

Oh, you're definitely asking that.

supposed to be, right, let's stop talking about this before I violate the unwritten rule of good tone trumps everything on HN.

Okay, then don't go to PyCon Africa or PyCon Saudi Arabia or whatever. You're not obliged to attend.

Your own life choices regarding body modifications and suchlike don't need to be held over everyone else in those regions who will benefit from these conferences.

>You know very well that coders are among the most reserved people on earth.

Do not free/open source software activity or geek culture feel like more close to leftwing?

p.s., this comment doesn't try to refute you.

It looks like that from outside but it really isn’t.

Stallman fir example was very clear about free software having nothing to do with communism, but of course people take just what they want from facts and ignore what they don’t want/like.

But, as i grow older, i realise itself not just software and it, it’s like that in most things.

I know free software is not communism, but leftwing do not represent communism, too. maybe I should not use the word "leftwing" here? like "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace", I always think geeks toward to change society with new technologies in past stories.

I think they meant reserved as in introverted rather than conservative.

this make sense, my fault haha.

"sanction the whole country to death because they don't agree with policies of people in power." 'Sanctioning to death' is perhaps not reasonable but, still, there should be standards for dealing with countries. Let us consider a different example. Without standards you end up with buying cheap goods made by children who work 12 hours a day on Saturday combined with driving your own child to violin lessons on Sunday. Not to mention that the children who work 12 hours a day are competing with properly paid adults in other countries.

To get back to LGBTQ rights, there also should be some standards. The standards should perhaps not be as high as western nations would like but they should exclude the worst places in the world. The story sounds like the PSF had at the time not yet decided what standards should be in place for subsidizing conferences. They should correct this omission because keeping a conference organization with this kind of uncertainty is not good.

"And why do you feel so strong about these policies? It's not like they're going to ask if you are a children when you arrive at the airport."

Just to also point how the grandparent comment's remark kind of misses the point.

The posturing over sexual preference is completely a passive aggressive white western phenomenon whose proponents insist on projecting to other groups whether they are willing to accept the dogma or not or whether they care or not, but simultaneously exclaim the evils of colonialism while not saying a word about your country in public because you're not white. There's an image they have to uphold.

One also assumes that the PSF will be similarly reluctant to sponsor a conference in Orlando/Miami, or Memphis/Nashville, given Florida and Tennessee's rankings as two of the worst states in the country for LGTBQ persons...

I frequent both of those states and it's the same as kabanda1's point: no one cares. There are plenty of LGTBQ people in both, particularly in Nashville, Orlando, Palm Beach, Hollywood (FL), Knoxville, and Miami.

> FYI, Most people here have no idea what LGBTQ means and those who do don't give a damn. Those leading the making of laws and noise making are just populists after their bread.

How do you reconcile these two statements? Populists by definition appeal to public sentiment, to the detriment of principals or morality. If no one cares, why are they wasting their time?

It's like the old joke "no one goes there, it's too crowded."

Maybe a wrong word to use. But politicians claim to be representing the people's voice in ceating those laws is not entirely correct.

In most African countries, people are still uncomfortable with LGBTQ, and the general show of love in public but not hostile to the extent of enacted laws

Remember most LGBTQ activism is sponsored by the west, so politicians use that to heat up the population about family, bill gates, blah, blah, that's where I used the word populism.

> You know very well that coders are among the most reserved people on earth, why punish them for their government rules?

I'm more or less on the same camp, but I am not African I come from another similar challenging demographic for the mainstream axis of tech (USA and Europe) and I'm reflecting a lot about it and I think we're going back to the "equal but separate" world in tech.

One thing that you should keep in mind is that a lot of folks within PSF have some pressures regarding optics and at the end of the day they are on the hook in their local conferences, companies, and local meetups, even if they personally do not believe in those restrictions.

At the time that I had the same issues at some local/national conference for other "X software foundation" the concrete action that we took was to de-risk and get local companies on board, individuals, and move forward.

I do not want to sound cynical, but I think those folks should get rid of PSF baggage and its "control by money", high horse cultural posturing, the politics and start small without all this.

> 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 who do don't give a damn.

Counterpoint (quotes from Wikipedia about Tanzania, where the conference was held):

> 95 percent of Tanzanian residents believed that homosexuality is a way of life that society should not accept [2007 survey]

> same-sex sexual acts (even in private and consensual) are criminal offences, punishable with life imprisonment

> On June 19, [2013] Human Rights Watch and the Wake Up and Step Forward Coalition released a report including several detailed allegations of torture and abuse of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals while in police custody.

> In 2018, a so-called "witch hunt" was declared against gay people in Dar es Salaam, where gay men were forced to endure anal examinations and torture.

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’s procrastination (which is a generous interpretation, a less generous interpretation could be “tactical stonewalling”) is very disappointing.

I generally supports PSF initiatives, I hope they will answer publicly and if necessary make commitments to improve their communications and processes. The PSF need to recognise the pent-up demand for support and financial aid outside of the Anglosphere. With good leadership they could make a huge contribution.

I appreciate the difficult situation that the organisers are now in: it takes courage to call out poor behaviour.

This doesn’t diminish the organisers or the event in any way: it was a huge success from my perspective as an attendee. DjangoCon Africa was the most invigorating conference experience I have had in years.

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.

I don’t see why it would take more than one PSF board meeting to approve funding for an event. Even if the board had questions, the follow-up is supposed to happen quickly. Several months to approve $9000 is silly. That’s probably just the catering budget for a 3-day, 200-person conference in the Bay Area - let alone for a conference for all of Africa’s Python community.

The FAQ[1] asks for 6 weeks before an event, so I suppose that's fair. That still seems like poor planning, though -- clearly the event was planned the the presumption that the funding would be approved. What would this open letter have looked like if the ask had been turned down altogether?

IMO the order of operations should be 1) ask for funding, 2) plan the event, not the other way around.

[1] https://www.python.org/psf/grants/faq/

Poor planning to ask for money 6 months in advance? How is that poor planning?

You ask for money far in advance so you can get a no with a reasonable timeframe to switch to something else.

Yes is easy, what's you're no plan?

Or you simply are extremely cautious not knowing how bureaucratic and slow the PSF is or is not.

6 months is way in advance. PSF policy is to ask 4-6 weeks before the event (Timeframe: We require that applications be submitted 6 weeks before the event/project start date - this gives us enough time to thoroughly review, ask questions, and have enough time to send you the funds.), so 6 months is more than enough time.

And we're missing the issue: the organizers were asking for $9k, which by all means should have been an easy yes/no. If they would have asked for 100k, maybe, but $9k is chump change.

The funding FAQ gives general guidance of $2500 at the high end and still discusses virtual events. I suspect some of the problem is the process is for very low budget meetups, and virtual things, not six-day real world events.

> asked for the funding fewer than five months before the event

The Python Software Foundation says that they need less than 6 weeks for processing grant applications:

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

Yeah, just dug that up myself. I still feel that you ask for funding and then plan the event, if the funding is crucial, but clearly the PSF set an expectation that it didn't live up to.

Note the same FAQ, though, says this: "There is no set maximum, but grants are awarded with consideration for the annual PSF grant budget and that events/sprints will be virtual...with that in mind are willing to consider up to $2,500 per request for larger virtual events."

My guess is that this FAQ needs an update now that the PSF is once again willing to fund in-person events.

It's a bit chicken and egg though: I would expect that a grant would be much more likely to be granted for an event that had a decent amount of groundwork already done? For new events especially, you'd want to see some commitment.

I'd want to see a plan, for sure. I would, in the place of the PSF folks, not want to be handed a "this is already in motion, and we are depending on funding so you better say yes."

This doesn't appear to be the case, and they had a plan if the PSF had said no. The problem is that they didn't say anything, which in turn meant they couldn't finalize the program or answer to their own requests for travel expense (either way).

In case you've never organized events before, it's a bit of a catch-22. You need to be prepared to accomplish what your funding request entails before you are awarded, to the degree of satisfaction of the grantor.

When the criteria and timelines are unclear, as they were here, the requestor is put in a position where budgeting becomes a more serious jeopardy to an event than any planning concern.

The PSF should have responded. There's really no cause for what they did, even if it was only miscommunication.

I’ve organized a lot of events, and I’ve been in the position of holding funding for community events. I’ve never put an event in motion with uncertain funding like this, ever. If I can’t do it without funding from a single entity and they may say “no” then I don’t set things in motion until they’ve said yes.

The letter says it was approved "nearly three months" after, and that's including the request for more information (idk if that should count as "processing" delay or not).

Definitely over 6 weeks but not as much as I first assumed.

I'm missing something: you're saying 5 months in not enough time for a bunch of people to meet up and say "yeah, we're giving money for this event" or "no, we're not interested" ? It should be a week or two to decide, not months.

I'm very disappointed in the PSF leadership. Their organization has a clear mission, and it's leaders need to be held accountable. Folks leading institutions ought to understand that they are placed there as stewards, not as an opportunity to exercise leverage in other areas, regardless of their good intention. People who donate to PSF do not want to be an instrument for another cause, they could just as well donate to that cause.

> What counts as “safety”? Which places in the world are truly safe for LGBTQIA+ community? How much of a city, or state, or country needs to be LGBTQIA+ hostile for the whole of it to be declared unworthy of PSF support?

What a cheap shot. You don't need a safetyometer or something to determine that a country where same sex relationship is punishable by life imprisonment is unsafe for homosexuals or bisexuals.

Correct. They kinda said the quiet part out loud there

At the same time, heck, the issue of 'regular safety' should not be downplayed.

Yes, some places in the west are worrying as well, but not usually at the same level. (And yes at a certain point I wouldn't advocate for a conference "anywhere" in SF without a certain risk management)

Perfect is the enemy of good.

You probably can't have a perfect convention under these circumstances, but having a convention at all can improve the situation in the long term. Helping the local coding community will, sooner or later, provide them with additional income and knowledge.

If you read the whole context, that is not the point at all. The point is (1) that the Python event would be an effective safe space even in a context of LGBT persecution, and (2) that it's illegitimate and counterproductive to prevent such an event from happening just because it's located in a less than enlightened country. Both of those are valid.

What is an effective safe space other than saying "relax, generally nothing happens"? Are you guaranteeing their safety? Of course not. I live in a "less than enlightened" country and I do know when everything feels safe tiny little things can lead to catastrophic consequences. I experience it regularly. Effective means nothing.

>tiny little things can lead to catastrophic consequences

Do you mean things that are against the law?

How does it matter?

Things that are against the law or things powerful people don't like. Law is just a tool for them.

In what sense does not organising conferences in your country help you then?

That's how the conference organizers see it, but other people have a different context. For example: why should a whole community implicitly support LGBT persecution by supporting a conference in a "less than enlightened" country? Why should I go to a country where I am hated and concretely risking trouble for my sexual orientation? Why aren't these organizers able to find a more suitable location, like South Africa a few years ago?

I think the point was not properly made on their behalf. That said, do the organizers of the conference have any saying on the politics on their country and actually deserve to be punished because of them?

I don't really think so.

That's literally how any 'anti-state' action works, ever. Does an individual Russian have a say in what Putin does in Ukraine? Probably not. But countries are a collection of its citizens. The only way to 'punish' a country is to punish its citizens. Sometimes it's more direct, other times less. But at the end of the day, any and all actions will trickle down to punishing individuals, because that's simply how actions against countries (or any other organized group of people) work.

>"The only way to 'punish' a country is to punish its citizens."

And the rulers of said country do not give a flying fuck about it. They're also protected from the revolt as they have police / army in their pocket to deal with the people.

> But countries are a collection of its citizens [sic]

This seems excessively reductionist. An organized state, borders, a system for generating revenue, an armed force, and other infrastructure seems necessary for a proper country to exist. All of these militate against treating the country as merely a collection of people, or using the people as the fodder to "punish" the country.

I am not sure if denying funding can be thought of as a punishment: could they have chosen another country?

But going along with it, allowing the conference to happen should then be considered a punishment against the people who are by law prevented from attending. And now it's not so simple anymore since no matter what the PSF does they have to "punish" somebody.

Indeed. Would the PSF deny funds to an event in the USA due to Trump's Muslim ban? How about if a country has a big pro-Israel or anti-Israel protest that the PSF doesn't like -- is that a legitimate reason to deny funds for events in that country?

An event like DjangoCon in Tanzania is most likely going to be a tiny step forward for LGBT rights there. The organizers are probably more liberal than the average Tanzanian. Organizing a Python event is going to bring liberal westerners to the country, and generally import a bit of the culture of the international Python community, which is LGBT-friendly. I don't see a plausible story for how this DjangoCon could be a step back for LGBT rights.

If I was a leader of the PSF, my approach would be to not worry about this issue by default. If I heard a story through the grapevine about LGBT Pythonistas feeling unwelcome at the conference, I would have a friendly conversation with the organizers to see if there's anything which can be done. If it keeps happening, or if the organizers don't seem to care, that's the point at which I might suggest they seek funding elsewhere.

Great point, but it might be safest to meet virtually.

The board is accountable for relating their mission statement to their budget. The highest bang for their buck might not be an on-prem conference.

Organizations should absolutely have avoided funding events in the US while we had a Muslim ban. The US is a big market so unfortunately some organizations sell out their values and do things here anyway. But we should obviously be held to the same standards as everybody else.

>Organizations should absolutely have avoided funding events in the US while we had a Muslim ban.

But did they actually do so? If not, it seems a little suspicious that the standard may have changed now that the event is in Africa? Perhaps holding everyone to the same standards means staying consistent with the previous precedent, that a few unjust laws shouldn't cause you to abandon an entire country?

Do it virtually if safety is an issue. Just like with covid.

At the same time, software should not be tied to politics. People should be able to hold different political views while taking part in software conferences.

>software should not be tied to politics.

Why not? I mean, software is a product like any other. I for example wouldn't like if a group like ISIS was using my software, especially if they were using it to actively help them in commiting their crimes. If I could prevent that from happening, why shouldn't I?

The DSFG is a nice counter-example to your claim. Either something is unconditionally free, or it simply isn't.

>either something is unconditionally free, or it simply isn't.

Ok, it isn't. So what?

>Why not

You have the right to hold you own political views, however you don't have the right to impose those on users of a particular software or participants in a software conference.

If that software is mine and I control who can use it? I absolutely do have the (practical) right to impose those values, yes.

You sure do have the rights to do that. A more general you does anyway. You can't export software to certain countries, basically due to their political position. Multiple sanctions exist today.

See also the licence giving the right to IBM to use the software for evil. https://gist.github.com/kemitchell/fdc179d60dc88f0c9b76e5d38...

A sponsor/steward of the conference like the PSF certainly can ask for their Code of Conduct to be enforced in exchange for sponsorship. If what is in the Code of Conduct does not suite you, go find a different sponsor.

A sponsor/steward of the conference like the PSF certainly can ask for their Code of Conduct to be enforced

and that already happened by allowing them to call it pycon, as doing so requires permission from the PSF trademark workgroup. and one of the conditions is having a code of conduct.

That’s a naive statement. People die in large numbers because of horrible governments. Software conferences should be restricted because of politics.

Political pluralism should be the default. When an "us vs them" mentality is embedded in every aspect of society, those are the conditions that lead to horrible governments arising. It becomes more about protecting/promoting the "us" and screwing over the "them" than running a functional fair government.

>Political pluralism should be the default. Agreed.

But that doesn't mean that EVERY and ALL political view should be respected. You can have political pluralism in some restricted spectrum, but not accept things that are too extreeme. Not tolerating human rights abuse doesn't automatically lead to every aspect of life being overtaken by "us vs them" mentality. Claiming that it does is nothing more then a slippery slope fallacy

Sure, if the DjangoCon Africa organizers had a history of human rights abuses, maybe that would be a reason to not fund them. But having a conference in Tanzania seems like a non-issue.

Imagine Tommy Tuberville was on the PSF board, and he stonewalls PSF funding for any conference held in a place where abortion is legal. (According to Tommy, legal abortion is a gross human rights violation.) Do you think this is going to be an effective or compassionate form of pro-life advocacy?

I would call that stupid because I don't agree with that view, but yes, he would have a right to not sponsor countries that have legal abortion. So what?

Is that the sort of world you want to live in though -- a world where people are constantly trying to impose their politics on others in this way?

I think we're all better off if we seek a little more compromise than that. It's like a prisoner's dilemma -- sure, you have the "right" to defect, but we're collectively better off if everyone cooperates.

Imagine the warm fuzzy feeling of bonding over a shared love of Python with someone from a different country who looks different from you and may even have different values from you. That was the world the Internet was supposed to create. I think we can still work towards that world, if we decide it's the world we want.

>a world where people are constantly trying to impose their politics on others in this way?

You know that this is happening from the dawn of human societies, right? There are always some laws and some views that are imposed. It always has been that way, and it always will be

Polarization is not a constant across time/space: https://www.brown.edu/news/2020-01-21/polarization

>> Political pluralism should be the default.

> Agreed.

> But that doesn't mean that EVERY and ALL political view should be respected.

Exactly, the difference is called “relativism”.

Political pluralism is nice when you are discussing things like tax levels or investment targets, but a lot of "us vs them" arises from discussions like "I just want to exist in the open without prosecution" vs "your very existence is a problem and needs to be prevented".

I would argue that one of the most effective steps you can take in a situation like that is to establish pluralistic institutions where people get to know each other in person, as fellow human beings.

What does this change? 100 years ago people were writing angry letters to the American newspapers about women suffrage being an obvious sign of mental disease spreading in the society. You think people writing those letters were isolated from women and didn't know them?

I actually think it is quite possible that the people writing those letters, for the most part, didn't have any healthy relationships with women. Or healthy relationships with suffragettes, at least.

And I would argue that where religious motivations are involved, reason and empathy utterly fail. Dogma trumps all.

The question is where you draw the line. Day to day politics probably shouldn't be the focus of such an org.

However care for human rights (maybe based around the UN's human rights charta or the European Charta on Human rights) might be a worthwhile foundation.

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.

>But somehow it's the people pointing out that the environment isn't safe who are getting accused of being against pluralism?

Pointing out that it's unsafe is one thing, denying funding is another

>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.

I agree. So I don't see why you are talking about giving a tech talk in drag. Drag is a costume, worn voluntarily, in the context of LGBT entertainment. A Python conference is not an LGBT entertainment venue. LGBT entertainment wasn't what the attendees signed up for.

Political pluralism means give and take. Seems like you want LGBT people to do all of the taking and none of the giving.

>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.

I mean, they pretty much can? Just don't advertise your LGBT status?

Isn't it true in general that African countries tend to be homophobic? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Africa

Most attendees are going to be from Africa anyways, so this situation is sadly pretty much expected for many of them.

Question: Is there even a single LGBT African who is complaining about this conference situation? Seems like you may be working very hard to save people who didn't ask to be saved?

In any case, in line with my "give and take" point from earlier, I think a reasonable conference policy would be as follows: Don't worry about this problem until an LGBT African person makes a complaint about it. At that point, talk to the organizers about whether the next conference could be organized in one of the few LGBT-friendly African countries, for the sake of LGBT Pythoneers in Africa. If you make that request, recognize that it may increase expense and inconvenience a lot, and be willing to foot the bill for the extra expense.

> denying funding is another

Is it? Since when does anyone have a fundamental right to funding?

> A Python conference is not an LGBT entertainment venue.

A Python conference is not the place to have a conversation about that at all. If someone shows up in drag, the question is, "what technical topic are they going to discuss?" If you have a dress code in mind for a Python conference, I would suggest that is a political ask. Code does not care if someone is wearing drag, it will compile the same.

> Political pluralism means give and take. Seems like you want LGBT people to do all of the taking and none of the giving.

"The government shouldn't be able to throw me into prison" is not "all of the taking". Again, if we were talking about the presence of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric or about people attending who were known to be anti-gay, maybe we'd have a conversation about give or take. But that is very much not what we are talking about.

Political pluralism is about give and take in order to allow people to coexist. And the scenario we are discussing is explicitly one in which one side has said, "you do not get to coexist and if you try to we will throw you in prison. Hide from us." That's not give and take.

Give and take is "we don't like each other but we'll live together and do our best to make this work." In contrast, "stop existing" is the opposite of give and take, and "stop existing" is what the Tanzanian government is asking for.

> I mean, they pretty much can? Just don't advertise your LGBT status?

If the risk of you letting slip that you're gay is a prison sentence, then that is not a reasonable ask, period.

It's also explicitly not a pluralist notion. Pluralism means living together; if someone needs to hide who they are, you're not learning about that person or getting to know them or being exposed to new viewpoints. People going undercover about something as fundamental as their gender is not pluralism, and if someone demands that of them, then they are not actually asking to live alongside people who are different. They are asking for everyone who is different to pretend that they are the same.

> Most attendees are going to be from Africa anyways, so this situation is sadly pretty much expected for many of them.

The conference was not turned down because of an assumption that the conference organizers were anti-gay, and I haven't seen any reason to label them that way. The conference funding was also not denied because of an assumption that African people would be homophobic.

I have no doubt that a lot of the people who were trying to organize this conference are great people who have no problem with LGBTQ attendees. This isn't about the African people, it's about laws.

> Is there even a single LGBT African who is complaining about this conference situation? Seems like you may be working very hard to save people who didn't ask to be saved?

What part of "you can be thrown in prison if you're outed as gay" do people not understand here? Do you think gay people in Africa like that situation?

And in any case, if you're throwing a worldwide conference and you want it to be pluralist, then it's not just your opinions that matter anymore, you have to be able to tolerate a global audience. Tanzania doesn't appear have the legal flexibility to do that.

>Is it? Since when does anyone have a fundamental right to funding?

No one has a right to funding, just a right to fair consideration. This sort of "no one has a right to funding" rhetoric gives the PSF license to discriminate in whatever arbitrary manner they please. Suppose Tommy Tuberville turns down your funding request because he doesn't like that an organizer is LGBT, and "no one has a fundamental right to funding" -- do you support that?

>A Python conference is not the place to have a conversation about that at all. If someone shows up in drag, the question is, "what technical topic are they going to discuss?" If you have a dress code in mind for a Python conference, I would suggest that is a political ask. Code does not care if someone is wearing drag, it will compile the same.

Suppose my girlfriend and I are into BDSM, and I'm planning to lead her around the conference naked on a leash. An organizer talks to me about this. I say: "A Python conference is not the place to have a conversation about this. Your only question should be what technical topic I am going to discuss. Your suggested dress code is a political ask. Code doesn't care about our kinks."

Should we treat a kink differently just because it happens to be disproportionately common among the LGBT population? Keep your kinks at home at a professional conference.

>"The government shouldn't be able to throw me into prison" is not "all of the taking". Again, if we were talking about the presence of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric or about people attending who were known to be anti-gay, maybe we'd have a conversation about give or take. But that is very much not what we are talking about.

Sorry this seems like a total non sequiter to me, you'll have to explain better. I don't see how it connects to the drag queen scenario. It seems like you're making a motte and bailey argument: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bri...

>And the scenario we are discussing is explicitly one in which one side has said, "you do not get to coexist and if you try to we will throw you in prison. Hide from us." That's not give and take.

Indeed, homophobic laws are bad.

I'm glad you also believe in give and take. Can you give a specific example of a "give" that the LGBT community should be willing to make? See my statement from earlier "Seems like you want LGBT people to do all of the taking and none of the giving." I'm happy to be corrected!

>Give and take is "we don't like each other but we'll live together and do our best to make this work." In contrast, "stop existing" is the opposite of give and take, and "stop existing" is what the Tanzanian government is asking for.

>...

>If the risk of you letting slip that you're gay is a prison sentence, then that is not a reasonable ask, period.

Maybe there's a misunderstanding here. I agree that the Tanzanian government are being jerks. My position is I don't think it's fair to take our frustration about that out on African people.

>What part of "you can be thrown in prison if you're outed as gay" do people not understand here? Do you think gay people in Africa like that situation?

Has there even been an anonymous complaint? Let someone make an anonymous complaint, a trusted community member can verify their identity, then maybe we can think about a venue change.

>And in any case, if you're throwing a worldwide conference and you want it to be pluralist, then it's not just your opinions that matter anymore, you have to be able to tolerate a global audience. Tanzania doesn't appear have the legal flexibility to do that.

I agree if the conference name was "DjangoCon Global" as opposed to "DjangoCon Africa", Tanzania would not be an appropriate location. As things are, I think it is reasonable to weigh the cost of a venue change, vs a few gay Africans having to briefly live under homophobic laws that they're most likely quite used to if they travel around Africa.

I think it is reasonable for "DjangoCon Africa" to target an African audience and make decisions around what works best for that audience. For example, if a venue change means that some LGBTs can now attend safely, but a much larger number of other conference attendees aren't able to reach the new location, then I think it is reasonable to stay in the original location, in order to maximize overall accessibility for attendees. Even if Tanzania is the wrong venue, I think that is a discussion for next year's conference -- this isn't a sufficient justification to cancel the conference altogether or deny it funding. That'd be like if a college defunded their intro to computer science class because not everyone got an A. It's a toxic need for equality. Again, it's not fair to take out frustration with Tanzania's laws out on the people of Africa.

> No one has a right to funding, just a right to fair consideration.

It sounds like they got consideration, problems of timing aside. I do wish the PSF had been clearer and faster in their response and I agree they deserve criticism for not handling the situation as well as they could, but they did consider funding. They gave the organizers consideration and it doesn't seem to me that the consideration was unfair.

> Suppose Tommy Tuberville turns down your funding request because he doesn't like that an organizer is LGBT, and "no one has a fundamental right to funding" -- how does that make you feel?

Is that what happened here? Were they turned down for an identity, or were they turned down because the physical location they selected, independent of anyone's political beliefs, had logistical problems that made it unsuitable for an internationally sponsored community event? Because those are two different things.

> Should we treat a kink differently

We're going to get to this "kink" brush you're painting the LGBTQ community with in a second, but also in the interest of speaking up for kink I'll ask: do you want a truly apolitical, pluralistic conference, or do you want one that makes you feel comfortable? It's okay for you to say that you want some political boundaries on a conference, I would probably feel uncomfortable at a conference with kink as well. Just don't say that you want it to be apolitical or pluralistic then. You can not be simultaneously arguing for pluralism and for people to be invisible. Invisibility is not pluralism.

> just because it happens to be disproportionately common among the LGBT population?

That being said, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that wearing drag is not inherently sexual. And before you get too caught up on drag, we should also acknowledge that of course a trans person not wearing drag but merely wearing appropriate clothing for their gender is obviously not sexual or kink. And to be clear, when you ask attendees to keep their identity under the radar, you are asking for transgender people to misgender themselves, you are denying them agency to wear clothing that would be perfectly acceptable for other people to wear at a conference, and you are denying them that agency based entirely on a political designation of their identity.

Funding was not denied for this conference because they weren't going to allow kink. Funding was denied because the government has threatened to imprison LGBTQ people, and in the defense of "pluralism" you are asking LGBTQ attendees to refrain from behaviors and actions that would not raise a single eyebrow from anyone if performed by someone of another gender. You are asking for invisibility and pretending that it's pluralism.

> Sorry this seems like a total non sequiter to me, you'll have to explain better.

It is not a reasonable cultural compromise to throw someone into prison, and laws that explicitly rule that people can be thrown into prison are the reason why funding was originally denied.

I'm not sure... how to say that more clearly. It doesn't strictly relate to drag in except that drag is yet another thing you could be thrown into prison for. But if you're under the assumption that funding was denied over drag, it wasn't. It was denied over tangible laws and government policy. Accommodation of that policy is not "give and take" and it is completely unreasonable to ask LGBTQ people to tolerate that situation.

> I'm glad you also believe in give and take. Can you give a specific example of a "give" that the LGBT community should be willing to make? See my statement from earlier "Seems like you want LGBT people to do all of the taking and none of the giving." I'm happy to be corrected!

Sure. Suppose we held a conference where people were allowed to attend that were gay, and also people were allowed to attend that were anti-gay. A conference organizer might decide, "yes, we have a position on this, but we're going to tolerate someone who is known to be anti-gay attending, provided no one is making anyone else feel unsafe."

That would be an example of give and take; two communities of people with disagreements temporarily deciding not to be at each others throats or temporarily deciding to tolerate someone's involvement even though they find them detestable. It doesn't require an anti-gay person to stop denying the existence of LGBTQ identity, and it doesn't require LGBTQ people to believe that the anti-gay person is any less of a bigot. But... we live in a pluralistic society and in the interest of keeping that society running we have collectively all agreed that we are going to do our absolute best not to kill each other.

In contrast, suppose we held a conference where people were allowed to attend that were gay, and then some other people said, "what the heck, no, I'd better not even be aware that there are gay people here, if I catch them they are going to be in physical danger." That is an example of one side doing "all the taking." The Tanzania government's position is not compromise. It gives nothing, it is a physical threat.

> Maybe there's a misunderstanding here. I agree that the Tanzanian government are being jerks. What I'm saying is I don't think it's fair to take that out on the Tanzanian people.

I disagree that this is being taken out on the Tanzanian people. The Python Software Foundation did not write the laws. I don't understand why you are looking a situation where a government has forced a tech conference to grapple with political issues to the harm of both the Tanzanian people and the general Python community, and your response is to blame the Python community.

This can stink for the Tanzanian people and that doesn't mean it's the Python Software Foundation's fault that the government makes it impossible to hold a pluralistic or inclusive conference in the country.

> Has there even been an anonymous complaint? Let someone make an anonymous complaint, a trusted community member can verify their identity, then maybe we can think about a venue change. As things are, I think it is reasonable to weigh the cost of a venue change, vs a few gay Africans having to live under homophobic laws that they're most likely quite used to if they travel around Africa.

If this complaint was about a specifically local event or about an exclusion from the community rather than a denial of funding as an official event, I would agree. But it wasn't a local event and it's not an exclusion from the community. I just don't think your characterization here is accurate, this was planned to be an international event, the linked open letter describes it that way. I'm not saying there can't be Python conferences in Tanzania, I'm saying they should not be funded by the Python Software Foundation as officially endorsed, international events -- or at the very least it is not unreasonable for the PSF to be extremely careful about funding those events and to carefully consider them.

> Again, it's not fair to take out frustration with Tanzania's laws out on the people of Africa.

Deciding after consideration not to proactively sponsor an event is not the same thing as taking out frustration on the people of Africa. It is not blaming the people of Africa, it's not punative, it's just acknowledging that unfortunately the Python Software Foundation is not in a position to change the reality on the ground about where it is and isn't safe to hold an international conference.

>You can not be simultaneously arguing for pluralism and for people to be invisible. Invisibility is not pluralism.

This seems like the motte and bailey thing again, where if you're not allowed to be a flamboyantly gay in drag at a conference, people are forcing you to be invisible.

By pluralism I mean compromise, not "danShumway gets his way on everything".

>That being said, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that wearing drag is not inherently sexual.

"My dom/sub relationship with my girlfriend is 24/7, it's not inherently sexual. She's my permanent pet and personal servant." Does that mean no one is allowed to complain about our public leash setup?

>And to be clear, when you ask attendees to keep their identity under the radar, you are asking for transgender people to misgender themselves

Again this pretty much seems like motte and bailey, ascribing a position to me that I don't hold, pretending distinctions don't exist. This style of rhetoric may be fashionable; that doesn't mean it's at all thoughtful or reasonable.

>Sure. Suppose we held a conference where people were allowed to attend that were gay, and also people were allowed to attend that were anti-gay. A conference organizer might decide, "yes, we have a position on this, but we're going to tolerate someone who is known to be anti-gay attending, provided they no one is making anyone else feel unsafe."

Thank you for giving an example.

In the same way you think a flamboyantly gay guy in drag is A-OK, I assume you also think a "flamboyantly straight" Christian would also be A-OK? ("Straight Pride", big crosses, maybe even bible quotes about gay sexuality?) After all they're just expressing their identity, it would be oppressive to force them to be invisible? ("God told me to speak my truth, you're going to send me to hell!")

Can you see why people might choose to agree on a norm of more subtle identity expression for a professional conference? And how a Christian who is asked to remove an "I Trust Leviticus" shirt would be acting like a diva if that Christian complained that you were "forcing him to be invisible"? Or if that same Christian says that gay people are oppressing him with their subtle rainbow jewelry because gay sex is gross and disgusting and causes him to involuntarily vomit, activating his gut condition?

Or are we going to define identity expression such that when gays do it, that's just an irrepressible part of their identity, but when Christians do it, they are oppressing others? It seems to me like you're pretty biased in terms of making these judgements, but for pluralism they need to be made in an unbiased way.

I guess what I'm trying to get at here is just, don't be a diva, and try to see things from the perspective of others. That's what's necessary for pluralism. I probably won't reply further here -- the conversation is not seeming especially fruitful to me.

> This seems like the motte and bailey thing again, where if you're not allowed to be a flamboyantly gay in drag at a conference, people are forcing you to be invisible.

The Tanzanian law is not that flamboyantly gay people get thrown in prison, it is that gay people get thrown in prison.

You are also letting the word "allowed" do a lot of work here. This is not about conference policies, this is about people getting thrown into prison, something that you seem to be extremely reluctant to acknowledge. There is no evidence that conference organizers here were anti-gay or had any disagreement with the PSF policies or dress codes. There is no evidence that conference organizers endorse homophobia or transphobia in any form, and no reason to believe that there was ever a disagreement between conference organizers and the PSF about what kinds of expression are suitable at a Python conference. We're not talking about conference organizers asking you to wear a different shirt, we are talking about political and legal consequences for an identity.

There is no mott and bailey happening here, you just don't seem to be understanding what LGBTQ attendees in Tanzania are being asked to do or what the risks actually are.

> By pluralism I mean compromise, not "danShumway gets his way on everything".

Throwing people into prison is not compromise. By all means, if your standard of compromise is that gay people get thrown into prison, then yes, I want my way on everything. I think our standards for collective tolerance in society should be higher than that. I believe that the baseline of tolerance is that nobody kills each other or throws each other into prison, and I believe anything less than that is not compromise or pluralism or give and take.

> "My dom/sub relationship with my girlfriend is 24/7, it's not inherently sexual.

This is a disingenuous comparison. If you believe that a trans woman wearing a dress is inherently sexual or flamboyant, then you could save us all some time by just saying that at the start. Please do not equate completely normal, reasonable gender expressions with kink.

On the same note, drag is not inherently sexual. If you believe that drag is inherently sexual, just say that. Don't do these weird wink-wink insinuations, say what you believe.

> Again this pretty much seems like motte and bailey, ascribing a position to me that I don't hold

You could fool me. You don't get to keep on doing this weird run-around where you accuse gay people of "flaunting" themselves just by being visible in public and then back off and ask where you ever asked people to keep their identity under the radar. Either you are ignorant of what Tanzania's laws on LGBTQ expression actually are, or you are asking people to be invisible when you ask attendees to respect those laws.

> In the same way you think a flamboyantly gay guy in drag is A-OK, I assume you also think a "flamboyantly straight" Christian would also be A-OK? ("Straight Pride", big crosses, maybe even bible quotes about gay sexuality?) After all they're just expressing their identity, it would be oppressive to force them to be invisible? ("God told me to speak my truth, you're going to send me to hell!")

It would be oppressive for a conference to ban Christians or to ban someone from wearing crosses. Yes, a conference might have policies about someone walking around with a giant "Straight Pride" shirt, but once again, please remember the context here: there is a difference between a dress code and throwing someone with a straight pride shirt into prison.

> Or are we going to define identity expression such that when gays do it, that's just an irrepressible part of their identity, but when Christians do it, they are oppressing others?

Explicitly no, people should feel safe identifying as Christians. I am a Christian. I want to feel safe at Python conferences. I should feel comfortable going to a conference wearing a cross pin or mentioning that I am a Christian at a conference, and I should feel confident that doing so will not get me thrown into prison. I should also feel safe flying into a conference with a Bible in my luggage even if I'm not planning to bring it to the actual conference. I shouldn't have to worry that going to a church later that week is a criminal offense. And if a location for a conference has laws on the books saying that if you're found wearing a cross pin or visiting a church you can be thrown into prison, then it is not a safe place for an international conference.

Similarly, if wearing a pride pin or packing a dress in their luggage or sharing a room with their partner can get someone thrown in prison, then it is not a safe place for an international conference, regardless of any other dress code or standard within the conference itself.

Of course, an expression of Christian identity is not inherently at odds with LGBTQ identity or LGBTQ acceptance/affirmation. Plenty of Christians are LGBTQ affirming, and the assumption that expressions of Christian identity are inherently bigoted does harm to both Christian and LGBTQ communities. But even if saying "I am a Christian" was inherently hostile to the LGBTQ community, and even if a conference in the interest of keeping its members safe decided not to allow Christian expressions that made LGBTQ attendees feel unsafe -- at the very, very least, that expression of Christian identity or opposition to gay rights should not get you thrown into prison.

This is genuinely not hard to understand.

> and try to see things from the perspective of others.

Seeing things from the perspective of others is incompatible with putting them in jail.

On the other hand, people should be able to go to conferences without risking life imprisonment.

Politics should not overshadow the technical aim, but when you have three or more people, politics are inevitable.

Agreed. The organizers of this conference have the responsibility to describe, out loud, what their laws prescribe for which actions tolerated in the West. The organizers themselves are taking a political risk doing that.

Software is intrinsically tied to politics. It is made to solve problems the priorities of which are arranged by political and ideological frameworks. It or its supporting infrastructure is often funded by political entities. It's written by people whose identities and freedoms are defined by their political context. You can't separate it from politics except in the case where your degree of privilege allows you to ignore it.

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

It's foolishness to believe that politics has no place in daily life when there are people who will make others' entire existences political. It's not a "gambit" if it's patently true.

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.

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

> What political stance am I taking?

That this thing should be made more efficient for any of multiple reasons like "boss told me to and I should obey him in this". And you'd just have to find someone arguing technological deployment should be restricted to protect jobs to confirm this is political.

> Do you think I intentionally made one?

No.

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

It can be so. You're still making a choice to ignore the situation and that has consequences too.

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

Yeah.

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.

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

Your position seems to be "I don't want to be bother ever by the problems of others if they don't affect me and my close ones directly". And that's a political position. A RIGHT WING political position.

My position is “not everything has political undertones”, and being coerced to act because you force me into a political spectrum for being neutral otherwise is not the liberal or tolerant ideology you think it is.

I am not saying that I will not take on the worlds issues, I am saying that I am not always making a statement with action or inaction.

characterising everyone who doesn't toe the line to your ideology with every single action is a very easy way to see the entire world as your enemy. Let me know how that goes.

It is deeply ironic how much you've engaged with political ideas in this comment while denying that you are doing so.

Cant interpret this charitably.

could you help me understand?

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.

> Software is intrinsically tied to politics.

No, it's not, you just want it to be so you can constantly bring up your political issues where they're not welcome.

What an odd and unwarranted assumption to make about me in response to six words.

>At the same time, software should not be tied to politics.

This sounds like an apolitical position, but it is a highly political position.

Software is and always will be tied to politics whether we like it or not. It can't be insulated from it.

Whether or not people should be imprisoned (or killed) for personal expression is a very different question than whether a country should have have a central bank, democratic representation or a strong welfare system. It’s a moral question, not a political one, and I think it’s fair to be uncompromising about certain moral questions.

Whether or not software should be political is kind of beside the point. Even if we assume that software should be apolitical, there's still the issue that it is the Tanzanian government that is imposing political restrictions on participation. The entire debate here is about the fact that the government of Tanzania will not not allow a software conference to exist in Tanzania that is divorced from politics.

If you truly, really want to be apolitical, then it shouldn't matter whether an attendee is openly gay or not. If it's really separated from the politics, then gay or anti-gay, trans or anti-trans, they should at the very least be able to participate while feeling like they're physically safe. And if they're not safe, then it's not apolitical.

If someone feels unsafe participating because of their identity, that is a political conference, it is a conference where people are being excluded on account of someone else's political views.

The PSF is not asking for everyone in Tanzania to say that they're fine with LGBTQ rights. But regardless of someone's political views about LGBTQ rights, LGBTQ people should still be able to participate safely in the conference. We're not talking about whether people can take part in a software conference while holding anti-LGBTQ views. We're asking whether or not it's reasonable for the political environment to threaten LGBTQ people and through that threatening environment prevent them from participating.

An apolitical conference is one where it's safe to give a tech talk regardless of whether or not you're openly trans, because regardless of whether or not people are offended about your gender, ultimately the technical content of your talk is the part that matters. A political conference is one where in addition to the tech, you also have to think about how you look and what clues you're letting slip and whether or not you're doing a good enough job pretending that your partner isn't your partner and whether you're using the bathroom people expect -- all just so you can avoid legal consequences from the government.

There's "holds different political views" and then there's "believe you and your kind should be exterminated".

Whether or not LGBTQ+ people should be arrested and potentially executed is not at all comparable to holding disagreements about tax policy, or whether bridges should be funded over tunnels. There is no spectrum of possible resolutions, and there is no moral ambiguity. No one should associate themselves with evil, and homophobia is evil.

The claims of Zanzibar being unsafe for LGBTQIA+ communities is ridiculous. I live there and it's the most tolerant place I lived in so far. There are laws, but as long as you mind your own business and don't disturb others, you will be left alone. I've even been to same-sex weddings here (between foreigners of course, same-sex relationships are still taboo between locals but they do exist) and have gay friends living on the island that never reported any incident (unlike in Europe).

Still, there are some things that should be avoided in public, out of respect for the local population. Kissing and holding hands for example is not well seen, even for heterosexual couples. Despite this, even if you happen to do it in public you will never face verbal or physical aggression from anyone, maybe just some frowns but even that is rare.

Pushing our views to countries that are still developing is Neocolonialism at its best. We take our progress in the West for granted, but it took us time to get there. Give the tools for Africans country to develop on their own, they will get there in their own time, there are many other pressing matters to address first.

There are various indexes of how LGBT+ friendly countries are. For example, equaldex lists Tanzania as rank 181 out of 197 countries (lower is better), with a total score of 12/100 (higher is better, best is Iceland at 92-100). They list their methodology and how their scores are computed, so if you want to present a factual counter-argument you are welcome to (I'm not an expert on the matter). But it seems to me that there is, prima facie, evidence for the claim that Tanzania is one of the least safe countries for LBGT+ people in the world.

Never been to Tanzania or Zanzibar, but I would assume that Zanzibar, being dependent on tourism, is more tolerant. Still, if I were gay and that would be punishable with life imprisonment in a country, I would avoid it...

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 big place.

A few charts is not a "fact". Or I mean, it is I guess, but that doesn't automatically mean it describes reality in any meaningful way.

Obviously Tanzania is not the best place to be gay, but details and nuance does matter, and can make huge differences.

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 of "why not?"

> 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.

> Is the law actionable?

Yup. I'm pretty willing to defer to what human rights organizations and the country itself say about their laws.

> Weed is illegal in the Netherlands.

Which:

1. is something that should change if it's an inaccurate reflection of the country

2. is nonetheless a far discussion from (what should be) a fundamental human right

> 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?

The Python Software Foundation didn't act on enabling this conference; that's precisely why the OP exists. Your argument, if you're defending the OP, is instead that we should act on our supposed "ignorance" in the face of laws which say one thing and internet people say another thing.

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

I really think this is a view that only makes sense in stable countries with strong rule of law, which I don't think is the case for most of the world. And even in the First World. Are Americans in states that legalized marijuana afraid of a random cop arresting them due to it being federally illegal? Is the average European concerned of being arrested for movie piracy? Seriously there are a lot of unenforced laws around the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unenforced_law

Not meant to be an argument for either side of this specific case, just a general opinion. Only looking at vibes is not enough but only looking at the law in the books is also not enough.

I agree that law isn't enough; it's not the end of the discussion, surely. But I feel it is the trunk that we should branch from.

If the law is ineffectual: the persuasive burden rests on the people saying so, not on the people reading the law as it exists on the books. Strong/weak rule of law could act against either side here.

> Are Americans in states that legalized marijuana afraid of a random cop arresting them due to it being federally illegal?

Yes. Not from street cops, but you better believe I'm concerned about airport security. You'll probably be safe, but I would not recommend a non-US person to test this. It's unreasonable to expect outsiders to understand which laws are enforced, particularly when the consequences of being wrong may include life imprisonment or death.

In my experience in one of the few blue enclaves in an overwhelmingly red US state[1], selectively enforced laws are frequently used by local law enforcement as an instrument of discrimination against "undesirables".

As a straight, white, young adult male, I noticed a strong correlation between the frequency of "pretextual" traffic stops in neighboring counties and the then-current length of my hair.

Racial minorities have it much worse:

Before Brainard took office, employees of then Carmel[, Indiana]-based One Call, many of whom were minorities living outside of Carmel and working late into the night, complained of being pulled over by Carmel police.

The city’s solution, which [Carmel mayor] Brainard called “terrible,” was to give employees car tags so police knew they belonged there, implying that if you were Black and didn't work there, the assumption might be that you didn't belong there. There was, however, no systemic change within the police department to stop ticketing Black people passing through." [2]

As for marijuana possession,

In Indiana, all but 13 counties are above the national average for racial disparities [in marijuana arrests]. And while Marion County’s rate of disparity is below the national average, there seems to be an alarming trend for surrounding counties to have disproportionately high arrests of Black community members. For example, Hancock, Hamilton, Shelby and Boone counties, all donut counties, have a racial disparities rate of greater than 10x. [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana%27s_7th_congressional_...

[2] https://www.indystar.com/story/news/local/hamilton-county/ca...

[3] https://www.aclu-in.org/en/news/racial-disparities-indiana-m...

For any event or group in the tech sector in the US or Western Europe, having an Equality & Diversity policy and a way to raise complaints and enforceable rules to ban discrimination are basically table stakes. The PyCon community in particular should know this since "donglegate"; whatever one thinks of that incident, the PyCon community in the "west" has since made quite clear that being an inclusive and welcoming environment is as much one of their core values as having python rather than perl as their preferred programming language.

The author of the open letter says that adopting a "human rights plan" (quotes in the original) would "pose a significant legal and personal risk to [the] organisers". Assuming this is true, we have a situation with no easy answer.

I think most people in the python community would agree that an event in a country where making a pro-equality commitment would not pose significant risks to the organisers, absolutely must make such a commitment.

If the choice is between events in Tanzania with no pro-equality statement, and no events in Tanzania at all, I agree that it's a question worth discussing. Should the PyCon policy be "your event must have an equality policy unless you have a good reason not to?"

What's the cut-off value for "not safe to hold a conference"? Is it applied fairly?

> There are laws, but as long as you mind your own business and don't disturb others, you will be left alone.

that's exactly what differentiates developed from developing countries: the rule of law. Not saying that it's perfect in developed countries (far from it), but at least you don't have to fear being arrested and face life imprisonment for something that's "generally tolerated", but in your special case wasn't because the police officer didn't like how you looked, or you didn't pay the customary bribe.

How many places in Africa are sufficiently "developed" based on your definition? Should they postpone all Python conferences until they develop the rule of law?

People from the countries that implemented progressive policies sometimes show unreasonable arrogance by expecting the whole world to change instantly according to the freedoms they're used to at home.

Or maybe accept that when you’re organising a global event, you need to be able to provide a safe space keeping in mind that you’re hosting guests that don’t necessarily embrace your “way of life”.

no conference organizer can provide a safe space from the law. the only really safe option is to not go there.

Yes, that's indeed the point being made.

You can't do that. For the same reason Africans might be offended by customs in the US.

I feel like this discussion is going places where it was never supposed to go.

The distinction between developed and developing countries you think is so clearcut is actually not so clear

"the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of sodomy laws in Bowers v. Hardwick in 1986. However, in 2003, the Supreme Court changed opinion and reversed the decision with Lawrence v. Texas, invalidating sodomy laws in the remaining 14 states: Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodomy_laws_in_the_United_St...

That looks like the rule of law working as expected to me?

You do realize that 20 years ago it was wrong to be gay in various US states, right? And I'm saying this with the consideration that most of the world sees the US as the most advanced country on the planet.

The rule of law was correctly implemented. Whether the law was morally correct or not is completely orthogonal to that fact.

So is the law implemented in various countries in Africa. It's up to you if you want to break the law by going there or not.

And it's up to the PSF if they want to fund a conference in a country with unconscionable laws.

> most of the world sees the US as the most advanced country on the planet.

With all due respect, mostly the US sees the US as the most advanced country

zanzibari gays do not exist? they are not locals in your understanding of the word? glad to hear the rich expat bubble in zanzibar is generally tolerant though! you’re only risking a life sentence as a western gay if you can’t afford to bribe the prosecutor, just like most other third world countries

“There are laws, but as long…”

Cool. So you live at the whims of a bunch of corrupt officials and police, who can decide if you should be imprisoned or not.

That’s not the same as being free.

This doesn't change the fact that the laws on the books are the laws on the books. Even if as a foreigner things are "safe in practice", that's not a guaranteed evaluation if the law still criminalizes it. Just because the people you know are safe doesn't protect a possible convention goer who gets a bad run in with the local police and that can result in very bad consequences (prison time) just because they wanted to attend a convention (and raises questions on why a grant for the convention was approved to begin with, given safety is a relevant factor for these).

Taking a quick glance at the Wikipedia page about LGBTQ rights in Africa[0] (going for the broad continent page here to see if there are other, less likely to cause problems, candidates for hosting locations), Tanzania is explicitly listed as "Punishable by prison" on the map, which the article text confirms. More broadly speaking, it would seem most of the countries in Africa have a poor track record on LGBTQ rights except for South Africa (although I'd not be surprised if any of the countries listed in grey on the map would've caused less problems with the grant approval, with "no laws either way" not being amazing but at least not inherently discriminatory). This begs the rather obvious question: why not organize in South Africa (or again, any of the more lenient countries), why does it have to be in Tanzania once these issues were brought to light.

The PSF clearly has standards they wanted to adhere to for these things and wanting a guaranteed safe space for contributors of all walks of life seems to be an important one. I understand the complications on this one and why the usual process resulted in it being kicked upstairs.

Which yes, does suck for the organizers, but again, Tanzania was chosen here and they even admit in the post that preliminary feedback caused a negative response surrounding event safety, so moving the event ought to have been considered with that in mind.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Africa

> I live there and it's the most tolerant place I lived in so far. There are laws, but as long as you mind your own business and don't disturb others, you will be left alone.

As a local you know how to stay safe. Visitors from other places, other countries, even other cultures lack this knowledge. And you can't except someone who has only third-party-knowledge[1] to trust in the claims of locals with unknown agendas. Taking time to investigate is legit. I mean, it took them only one month to figure it out, and we don't know how much time they had before that september-meeting.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Tanzania

> Still, there are some things that should be avoided in public

Now read this again and imagine yourself in the shoes of someone who needs to suppress who they are in public, just so they don’t get stoned to death or make local narrow minded folk get a headache.

> out of respect for the local population.

You're a guest, there are some cultural do's and dont's and holding hands in public is one of the latter, even for heterosexual couples. I don't hold hands with my girlfriend in public even though it'd be totally safe to do so, it's disrespectful because it's not the local custom to do so.

In contrast, many of my LBGT friends in European capitals fear to show affection with their partner in public, with most having faced harassment and some even assault. According to our European values it should be normal and safe to express affection to our partner in public regardless of our genders, but the reality is sadly different.

And what of trans folks? Are they supposed to not go to the toilet for 3 days so they don't offend your culture? Or when there is small talk, should I change "my husband" into "my wife" just so I don't upset the locals?

I hope you see how ridiculous this "just don't show it" is, especially coming from folks who think LGBTQ+ is all about kissing and holing hands.

A global event should not be hosted in a country, state or a city where even the organisers are unable to make adequate arrangements for the safety of all attendees and speakers.

As said, Zanzibaris are very tolerant, they will let you exist in peace regardless of how you look, your gender, sexual orientation, religious believes or nationality, they just don't care. I know of trans people spending their holiday here without any incident, at most it was just their taxi driver being curious but at no point they felt unsafe.

Don't abuse their tolerance and respect their customs. The same way you'd expect someone to respect you and your house rules if you invite them home. You just have to accept that people live differently in different parts of the world, maybe it's not them that are intolerant.

I'm convinced a global tech event can be hosted in Zanzibar where everyone is welcome and safe.

Some people might be shocked that you can be incarcerated in the US for putting substances in your own body.

They're still good questions to ask and have answered beforehand, though, so that a decision can be made quickly. Apparently the decision here was that that unsafety was not enough to withhold the funds, in which case it would have been great to have been able to make that decision more quickly.

I wonder how the signers of this letter would feel if the Python conference was to be organized in a country where slavery was still legal. Would they say something like "don't worry, you are not a slave, it's ok to go there, nothing will happen to you"?

Slavery is still de facto legal in Mauritania (ostensibly outlawed back in the 1980s but still omnipresent), and foreigners go there all the time. Overlanding from Europe to West Africa is popular. States where slavery is legal, or remains de facto legal as in Mauritania, generally have had a system for who becomes a slave, and it isn’t a posh foreign visitor. It is prior slaves’ progeny, prisoners of war, or purchase on the market from sellers selling the former two groups.

In fact, it isn’t just posh foreigners. Many Senegalese people go to work in Nouakchott for a few years, save up money, and then return home. They aren’t worried about being enslaved because, again, the slavery system isn’t about them.

This thread is about python. What you have here has no connection to what anyone has said.

The OP wrote “I wonder how the signers of this letter would feel if the Python conference was to be organized in a country where slavery was still legal.” I mentioned a country that is known for modern-day slavery yet draws foreigners, with the implication that it might not be as shocking for tech organizers as the OP thinks. For example, the country has recently been prominent in the OpenStreetMap community[0], but I have never seen the discussion go off into concern about slavery, and I wouldn’t expect a large outcry if one of the big international OSM conferences like SotM was organized there.

[0] https://www.trufi-association.org/projects/public-transport-...

I mentioned a country that is known for modern-day slavery

You went off on a wild tangent about slavery when they were making a point about python conference organizers.

Just because someone says the word 'slavery' while emphasizing their point doesn't mean it makes sense to unload some unrelated slavery facts.

This is like someone reading a wikipedia article and clicking on a single word, then going to the wikipedia page that has no relation to the original article. (Please don't respond with a history of wikipedia, that isn't the point here)

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.

This is not normal. When someone makes a point about conferences in places with terrible human rights and you miss the point completely to talk about something unrelated, it is not normal conversation.

This is the sort of delicate topic that tends to exceed the boundaries of normal hypocrisy, with tangents that are irrational and self-delusional (like the abundance of slightly blunted, sometimes subconscious hate speech), rhetorically illogical and distracting (slavery, precedents of other conferences in other places, etc.), drastically missing the point (e.g. the distinctions between Tanzanian laws and what happens to foreign tourists in Zanzibar).

I'm with most of this. But then we get to:

>In one recent example, voices on the PSF Board were demanding that a condition of funding for a particular PyCon be the formal adoption of a “human rights plan” - a measure that would pose a significant legal and personal risk to its organisers. > >The entitlement and assumption of cultural superiority embodied in these ideas are absurd and offensive.

I can't track down what this 'human rights plan' requires. I also understand that Europeans (and Americans) need to be very careful when projecting cultural norms to other places. I'm not here for cultural colonialism. And there are some countries where supporting LGBTQIA+ rights (and others) is illegal.

The PSF should be careful when it comes to trying to force organizers to take stances that would put organizers in legal jeopardy. But if you find it 'absurd' and 'offensive' to support human rights beliefs that are espoused by a funding body... don't take the damn money.

People can disagree on what human rights exist, and how they should be enforced. I'm well within rights to ensure that funding I'm giving you is contingent on respecting the rights of the people I serve.

Sorry, but there are some hard lines. And support of human rights is culturally superior than non-support of human rights. And if you don't like that, don't take the money.

> And if you don't like that, don't take the money.

If christian missionaries had these attitudes, Protestants with their ethics would have still be just around the Northern Sea. (And I consider protestant church a carrier of protestant ethics, that Webber described.) Because, those peoples where they sent the missions, were not living to the rules of protestants -- some had no weddings and changed wifes over time, some probably did human sacrifice, or killed each other, or stole, etc.

Missions taught people literacy and arithmetics. And also cared about the 10 commandments. Yet they sent and kept missions where people didn't adhere to those.

Same should apply to human rights -- rather than stay away proudly, let others interact with you and let them absorb your moral standards.

=============

If the above is too archaic/colonial, here's a current example: some Western universities, and the German Goethe Institut have their branches in Central Asian ex-USSR countries. All of them are wannabe-muslim, with 60+% of people considering themselves muslim. Open discussion about LGBTQ rights is a very thin ice -- it may lead if not legal consequences, but a very unpleasant mob, or demands to close the event, and bureacracy will silently follow these demands. One of the countries (Kyrgyzstan) has even an "underage gay propaganda" law, which makes any open discussion legally dangerous.

I bet Goethe Institut management deeply cares about these rights.

Should they close, or keep working, spreading their word and values in these countries?

p.s. Maybe it's all just about not spoiling the PSF brand name, by putting it next to some state entity (which state violates some human rights), then PSF should be open about it.

Stonewalling, delaying and simply not responding can be so much worse when they play out in real situations than people might imagine. You can waste a lot of the other person's time this way. We might hear a lot of justifications like "whoops" or "volunteers!" but the supposed deniability of such tactics is part of what makes them so exasperating and emotionally draining to deal with. I will withhold a final judgement until hearing the other side but it really looks like the PSF has a lot to answer for here.

Did they "not respond" though? Or just needed time to make the decision?

The amount of comments both ways in this thread can at least attest to the difficulty of this decision. Can we really fault them for deferring it, provided they informed of that fact?

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).

That's interesting. I used to regularly donate to FSFE but their weird relationship with FSF prompted me to stop recently.

PSF's meeting notes from the time https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2023/10/september-october-board...

> 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.

I would expect that grants should skew towards where the need is greatest. Countries with more resources shouldn’t need grants as much.

I would think that the money would "go further", and the impact of getting the grant vs. not getting it would be greater, in most of Africa compared to, say, the Bay Area in California. Not the only basis for consideration, but one might think that the PSF should be prioritizing places where, if they give a grant, it makes a large positive impact on the outcome. I'm no expert, but it seems plausible that this might be more often the case in Africa than elsewhere.

I wonder if part of the solution here is to request the grant and only start planning the event if the grant gets approved or denied?

In any case, I would say the PSF should have a presumption towards supporting events in Africa, since their money will go farther there, and presumably will do more to nurture the nascent Python community in Africa (vs Python communities elsewhere in the world which are already well-established). Just my 2c

The solution here is to be open about decision criteria and to make decisions in a timely basis.

PSF would be acting in its own best interests to adopt a more professional approach to African community building - it’s not charity.

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.

This is not grant driven acedemia. This is the PSF, not encumbered with layers of beurocracy, audits and regulation. An expectation of a turn round time of a few weeks is entirely reasonable

Apparently, the two decision making bodies in the PSF for this matter have once-a-month meetings. This means any problem or missing information or whatever will delay the process for at least a month. So, maybe not a year, but 6-9 months would be a comfortable timeframe. I stand by it: 4 months before the event is WAY too late, and even with a slim organization, 3 months to get a decision is an absolutely reasonable time.

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.

this was my first reaction. how fast they came to a consensus, it was the organizers fault for applying so late, it the boards fault for approving in only 3 months. 1 year prior to the con is more what I would expect.

Why do “open letters” get so much more respect and attention than an ordinary whining email? The headline “A whining email to <organization>” would be ignored. Change it to “open letter” and it’s instant gravitas.

Seems to be the same sort of magic words as ”considered harmful”……. instantly credible and worthy of consideration.

I really should frame all of my grumbles about the state of the world as “open letters” so people pay attention.

Open letter to open letters.

To get people to take you even more seriously, hammer some number of theses on an organization's door.

Open letters considered harmful?

That is confirmation bias. You only know of the successful open letters and are ignoring all the ones which were not.

Search this very website for the term and sort by popularity, then start from the last page. See how many you ever even knew existed.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&prefix=false&query=ope...

Yep, I can call a press conference tomorrow and the attendance will be binary.

Because putting "whining" in the title of such a genuine request would entrench the people ignoring it in the first place, they'll just say "these are not serious people! We were right in ignoring the request! Who in his/her right mind puts 'whining' in the title of a petition?".

As such, calling it an "open letter" might have bigger chances of success, even though (and judging by the responses of many of the people here), I don't think that those chances are that big to begin with.

Either way, shameful conduct by the PSF, I used to look up to them ~20 years ago when I started learning Python.

Letters can be a lot of things.

Sometimes letters are about love, sometimes they're insulting, sometimes they're ambivalent, sometimes they're begging, sometimes they're threatening. So letters can be a lot of things, but they're fundamentally letters, and some letters are open, like this one.

The authors here called their letter an open letter because that's what it is. If you think it's just a whining email, that's a you thing, that's your own personal interpretation of the letter. I personally would not call it a whining email. It's a letter with people raising their genuine heartfelt thoughts.

I didn't even read it - the subject isn't interesting to me.

All open letters are expressions of dissatisfaction.

> We know that there are some extraordinary attitudes at work within the PSF. A PSF Board member once openly expressed the opinion that Anglo cultures always seem to be the ones that take the moral lead around the world, leaving others to follow their example. From any non-western perspective, this is an astounding idea to receive.

> That’s not a solitary episode. We understand that (notwithstanding the PSF’s ambition to support Python in Africa) a PSF Director has consistently spoken out against funding for African events, over a period of years.

Okay we need names.

PSF would gain a lot from getting acquainted with Kipling's The White Man's Burden.

It’d be a mixed message, since the Philippines is high value for international conferences and outreach.

> Anglo cultures always seem to be the ones that take the moral lead around the world, leaving others to follow their example

This seems to be my lived experience, so I would say it's true. It would be interesting to see facts/figures on this. But then how to you quantify morality? The fact is, from an "Anglo culture" perspective we are leading with morality because we live in this culture so that's what we believe morality is, and it is the others' that have it wrong.

Girls being executed for not following religious clothing, or female genital mutilation probably seem as the correct and moral thing to do within those cultures that practise it.

I would like to think that objectively I personally find the Anglo set of morality the correct one as it maximises individual liberal freedoms and happiness for people.

I don't think the 'west' should fund conferences in countries that have anti LGBT laws which would be considered hate crimes here. Taking that further, it means we shouldn't deal with Arab countries or some Asian countries. But we look pass our version of morality to do trade and commerce on a global scale. We sell weapons to dictators.

Not an easy issue to think about or discuss from an objective viewpoint, if one can even exist.

> Not an easy issue to think about or discuss from an objective viewpoint, if one can even exist.

Certainly so, if one has blinders to the history of colonialism and neo-colonialism. Of course a global empire is also going to export it's culture and values, and these include things like privatization of public resources and other impositions. As far as western domination goes, historically the missionaries handle the preaching of values, while the armies, lawyers and accountants keep the population in line.

Now, we have concepts like RTP ("right to protect") which is repeatedly and selectively weaponized to legitimize invasions and regime change over "human rights violations" while those same violations e.g. in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere are tolerated or even encouraged.

This isn't to deny that some freedoms in the West are hard to find elsewhere. But there are also numerous examples of people having more practical freedom than in say the US, for instance, the freedom to get quality healthcare without a job and without going broke, which works way better in e.g. Turkey, despite it's bad political situation.

In the case of Africa you have the legacy of colonialism to contend with. Africa isn't inherently predisposed to dictators and populists, it's a symptom of the dire circumstances of the various states which the West has a lot to answer for, in terms of maintaining corrupt structures, as well as continuing to reap the gains of resources mined in those states etc.

In sum, the West can share a great deal of the blame for the poor situation culturally, politically etc in a number of states with fragile/bad political situations in Africa, so to blindly assert "gee, it seems like the Anglosphere is the only folks who care about human rights" without considering this reality is naive at best.

Once upon a time, we wanted something nice but couldn't afford it. Someone gave us money but we wanted the money faster so we complained and publicly shamed the people who gave it to us. The next time we asked for money they didn't help at all and we don't know why. The end.

It's a grant, not an entitlement.

True but I'd have appreciated if they said no to the grant earlier.

I hope Python Africa has learnt it lesson and will find ways to manage resources locally. That the only way to succeed in long run.

So PSF is not a global organisation. Africa need not apply is a pretty bad look.

Then when you tell Westerners that Africans are trying to "develop their continent" themselves, but they face various kinds of hurdles towards this objective, they will only dismiss it and say it's just that they are incapable of developing anything...

Then say "no" quickly so that they can look for other funding. [EDIT] And be honest about the fact that Africans (or more charitably, countries that have particular laws or a particular pattern of enforcement) Need Not Apply.

>And be honest about the fact that Africans Need Not Apply

I have the hunch that that is what it came down to, a matter of public perception. Shunt africa, or shunt lgbt? Both "important minority identities" in the current zeitgeist of the western world. Probably no one wanted to touch that decision with a 10 ft pole.

The open letter states it was a single individual that was able to stonewall the process. It wasn’t about the PSF group as a whole that didn’t want to touch the decision. One person. I think the letter has a fairly good point that processes are broken if this is possible.

I have to guess that, based on the meeting minutes posted nearby, the one vote needed to reach 5/10 vote is what this is referring to. The minutes explain a high number of abstentions. The chair of the PSF board was one of the Zanzibar organizers, for example.

It doesn't seem like it was so simple as the open letter puts it? From the boards blog post

https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2023/10/september-october-board...

The first vote had 6 abstentions and 4 yes votes. The second vote had 10 yes votes and 1 abstention. It seemed there was enough outstanding information/questions for 6 total people to abstain, though perhaps 1 of those 6 was using it nefariously? Hard to say

How many LGBT Python developers would actually feel shunted by the PSF sponsoring a conference in Zanzibar?

It's also done with the aim of helping put on an effective event and supporting the community, if the grant status is unknown until weeks before, that goal is severely undermined.

I doubt the authors of this would have had a problem with being rejected 3 months before the event, at least that would be some certainty and they could cancel or seek alternative funding.

So what's the PSF for, then? Looks like supporting the spread of Python the language in geographical spaces like Africa should be at the top of their priorities list, at least by looking at current demographic trends, and not to invest in another boring Python conference held in Nowhere, OH, or in Neinpinkelsburg, Northern Rhenanina.

> to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers.

A lot of comments are related to whether an alternative pan-African PSF would define diversity differently. If so, then a Eurocentric PSF might prefer conferences elsewhere.

I'm shocked, although not surprised what a large fraction the comments here are racist in nature

White supremacists target online discussions as a way to promote their bigoted hatred.

Any time there's a thread that includes anything they consider might promote progressive values, a swarm of different hate groups and trolls arrive. They then try to steer the conversation towards their own delusional nonsense.

Deeply frustrating but incredibly difficult to police. I have some small hope that AI will be able to combat some of the deluge of hate.

You can't demand people in other places to McDonaldize their conference to the latest intellectual fashion of the costal United States.

Demanding others to comply to your cultural standards (and denying cooperation otherwise), you actually strip yourself of the opportunity to spread them (cultural standards).

Genuine question - why not? If (for the sake of argument) the money is raised in the coastal United States, why are they not entitled to disburse it conditional on respecting LGBTQ rights?

My point is that sure, one can set this condition too, and be very strict about it. But this way they just close the ways to spread their culture.

If Protestant churches were behaving this way, they'd still have stayed in North Europe exclusively, not send missionaries anywhere, and achieved nothing.

Well, why can't the local developers organize a conference without Python Software Foundation blessing?

They can. They feel entitled to funding. Rightly or wrongly, I don't know.

In my reading I think they first and foremost felt entitled to a clear answer.

IME, I've learned to take an unclear answer as No.

We always have local python conferences in Africa without any outsiders financial contribution.

The reason why they expected the contribution is because they are sort of official

Being "sort of official" doesn't really seem like it should guarantee much of anything

They could. Or they could just not organize a conference at all:

>More than one of us confided in another that we wished we had never started the project.

One way to think about this situation is that the PSF exists to promote Python. If their slow grantmaking process is giving organizers such a headache that they wish they just didn't organize Python events, the PSF is failing at its mission.

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.

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 organizers get a better response because they've been doing this for a while, know the PSF Board personally, and the event is a known quantity.

On the flip side, if you want to make change and not just virtue signal, it's always better to engage. Organize a call, express your concerns, hear the organizers out, and find appropriate action to take. Of course, this process might not run on a timeline that is convenient to the organizers.

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.

I think that they knew they had funding, so they started organising it without having money. Then transfer took longer than expected, so organisers had to shell out the money themselves

This thread is pretty wild. It's interesting to see north-western racism and african homophobic laws exposed like this.

I don't think it should have been an issue and PSF should have been clear about the reason behind their delay.

Nobody intimately studies a countries law when sponsoring events in said country, they judge based on general knowledge and vibes, which is what makes this iffy and biased.

Else most countries would be in the spotlight as nation states don't generally do whats good for their population, they instead obey "national interests" which in capitalist societies is the capitalist class' private profit enterprise.

Say what you want about the language's complexity but this wouldn't have happened if it was a C++ conference.

Can you go on and be clearer with what you mean?

What point are you trying to make?

They were probably trying to allude to this[0] past controversy around C++ conferences (you can also google "c++ sex offender" and will find more sources around that).

[0]: https://patricia.no/2022/03/08/cppcon.html

"We started a fundraising campaign on GoFundMe to help cover the cost of financial assistance. (...) the pleasure and gratitude we felt about that was overlaid with a feeling of humiliation that once again, a major African open-source software event had been obliged to publicly extend a begging-bowl"

The entitlement! Dude, you are literally asking for money to the PSF and feel that a crowdfunding campaign is below you? No one is forcing to do a conference.

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