Python Software Foundation gets a donor surge after rejecting federal grant
31 comments
·November 9, 20255iqwzTa
abenga
It's not the source of the funds, it's that the government grant wanted to force a change of how the foundation does things, especially inclusion and outreach efforts.
duskwuff
Importantly:
1) The grant was for a specific, bounded project, but the anti-DEI terms would have applied to all activities of the Foundation, regardless of whether they were funded by the grant. (Which isn't to say that those terms would have been acceptable even for a single project, but having them apply to unrelated activities is even worse.)
2) The terms of the grant included a clawback clause - if, in the administration's eyes, the Foundation did anything to "advance or promote DEI", the grant would be rescinded, and the Foundation would be required to repay any money they had already spent. Given the size of the grant relative to the Foundation's budget, this was an unacceptable risk.
ta9000
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OutOfHere
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saubeidl
When did "woke" - i.e. "awake and not closing ones eyes to the problems in the world" become some sort of slur ? What does it say about people that use it as such?
add-sub-mul-div
It wasn't exactly the Streisand effect, but I remember thinking the whole flourishing of trans rights and acceptance between 2017 and 2021 never would have happened if Hillary had won. Is there a name for this phenomenon?
Did both parties implicitly understand up until 2017 that going too hard too fast is counterproductive?
gm678
I don't think this timeline is quite accurate - the 'transgender tipping point' Time magazine cover was in May 2014.
nobodyandproud
Disagree.
2014 was years before it became a mainstream cry to treat trans women as cis women. I didn’t really hear or notice this until the late 2010s.
I also believe the trans community hurt itself and its own members by pushing this narrative/falling into this trap, though things like the bathroom bill made it inevitable?
Perhaps it’s old fashioned, but what I believe is an acknowledgement and celebration of differences. What the new generation pushed is hiding those differences; by pretending there are none.
It’s much harder to argue against “let’s all agree we’re all human and make this work”.
jancsika
I don't understand the implication of your first sentence.
The NC Bathroom Bill passed in March 2016, and it had an immediate flurry of corporate backlash that lasted to the partial repeal in 2017. The bill was part of a growing amount of anti-trans rhetoric (and legislation) from the Republicans starting a few years before. But it was the first bathroom bill AFAICT.
Are you saying that the Republicans would have been less likely to pass that bill under a Clinton presidency? If so, what's the extraordinary evidence for that?
Alternatively, if you are saying they would have been more emboldened to pass it, are you suggesting that the backlash would have been smaller under a Clinton presidency? That's in the realm of possibility, but again what's the evidence here? Obama had already shifted to supporting gay marriage before the relevant Supreme Court case (probably due to Biden's gaffe of pre-emptively announcing his own support for it). So I just don't see why you would assume a Clinton presidency would effectively muzzle support for trans rights in this case, or have any effect whatsoever on the NC Bill and its aftermath.
Edit: clarifications
bigbadfeline
> Did both parties implicitly understand up until 2017 that going too hard too fast is counterproductive?
Of course they did, as they do now, it's game politics 101, it's all in the game plan.
colechristensen
>Did both parties implicitly understand up until 2017 that going too hard too fast is counterproductive?
Politicians know this, people don't necessarily.
themostunique
The wall and the egg phenomenon?
buckle8017
The grant simply required that the recipient comply with the equal protection clause of the constitution.
viraptor
No. The specific point is "They do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination law".
smolder
That rebranding of DEI is hilariously childish in an entertaining way, while deepening my loathing for the people behind it. I respect the choice to refuse those terms. Even organizations that aren't heavily focused on/invested in outreach and inclusion should refuse to accept those terms.
AdmiralAsshat
The idea that helping specific people is somehow running afoul of the equal protection clause is a fucking joke. It's like saying you can't setup a charity organization for the poor and disadvantaged unless you also donate equally to wealthy billionaires, lest you be engaging in "economic discrimination".
michaelsshaw
The equal protection clause is as follows:
"No State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"
Not only is the PSF not subject to this clause, the only subject to the clause are governments and the PSF is not even capable of violating it. In what way would DEI programs violate this clause?
MarsIronPI
In the brief reading of the article that I had time for, I couldn't find the exact reason why the grant was rejected. Does anti-DEI automatically mean discrimination? Call me naive, but as far as I can see, DEI isn't necessary for a volunteer project. Why does it matter how many of a project's contributors are transgender?
borntyping
The PSF withdrew their application for the grant from the US government after being presented with terms that included "do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws", which conflicts with their mission statement: "The mission of the Python Software Foundation is to promote, protect, and advance the Python programming language, and to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers."
[1]: https://pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-funding-statement.h...
viraptor
It's not just about transgender people. When you have a tech organisation and say "all our members are old white guys... maybe there's something that keeps others away from us? let's make sure there are no barriers", you're engaging in DEI.
Remember when the government went anti-DEI crazy and started covering displays of influential women and people of colour at places like NSA? That kind of decision maker may be handling the PSF's grant.
JuniperMesos
> It's not just about transgender people. When you have a tech organisation and say "all our members are old white guys... maybe there's something that keeps others away from us? let's make sure there are no barriers", you're engaging in DEI.
I would like to see this kind of thing treated, socially and legally, as equivalent to saying "This tech organization has a lot of Jews... can we do something about that?" (Indeed, many of the exact same people who are classified as white men who are disproportionately present in tech organizations by DEI advocates are also Ashkenazi or Sephardic Jews, and the DEI advocates are treating their white male identity rather than their Jewish identity as politically salient). If some organization refuses to refrain from treating the disproportionate presence of white men in some organization - or the assumed disproportionate presence of white men - as a problem, I think it's reasonable for the US federal government to refuse to give them grant money.
shayway
Would everyone agree with that definition, though? It seems like discussions around DEI tend to go in circles, because proponents see bad implementations as not really DEI, and opponents see good implementations as not really DEI either.
I recently read in the local news that some city department, in order to comply with anti-DEI stuff, was changing its name to remove the word 'diversity'... and nothing else. DEI has no legal definition. It feels like the new "woke", where the actual meaning is irrelevant, and its only real purpose is tribalistic social signalling.
Shawnj2
By accepting the grant they are giving themselves a legal responsibility to “not do DEI” where the government arbitrarily decides what DEI is. Even something like employing a trans software engineer or talking about the impact Python is having in POC communities could be considered reason to go after PSF legally or rescind the grant. It’s just not worth the risk for the reward.
viraptor
Naming things is hard. Yet we deal with lots of other vague concepts without losing our minds. There are some extreme voices, but somehow I've never heard anyone actually digging deeper into the issues to describe dei as just tribalistic signalling. When you strip out everything else, maybe that's a sign you lost all nuance?
In development we'd just accept it as normal to say "Putting each literal value in its own module is not a reasonable application of modular design." without claiming that the name "modular design" is now misunderstood and irrelevant.
simonw
You might find this video interview with our PSF executive director useful to better understand the issue at hand: https://youtu.be/Ac3H16pPLNI
8note
it the previous hn post, tbe major topic was that the government could claw back its money with any flimsey premise, about anything the organization does or people related to it do, and not specific to the project the grant was for
like, somebody going to a "women in tech" conference could result in suddenly having to find millions in cash to pay back the government.
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AdmiralAsshat
Guido has been fairly vocal about mentoring exclusively women in Python, because he's of the opinion that they need the help much more than men as far as breaking into the industry.
But admitting in public that you are giving preferential treatment to anyone other than white men is an instant rage-boner for the Trump administration.
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