1.5M is a laughably small number compared to the value that financial institutions extract from just having PyPi available. I know my company, not financial but still large, has containers hitting it every day. How do we get these groups to fork over even just a small amount?
> These terms included affirming the statement that we “do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws.”
(Emphasis mine)
I'm curious if any lawyer folks could weigh in as to whether this language means that the entire sentence requires the mentioned programs to be "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws." If so, one might argue that a "DEI program" was not in violation of a Federal anti-discrimination law.
Obviously no one would want to have to go to court and this likely would be an unacceptable risk.
This isn't good for the PSF, but if these "poison pill" terms are a pattern that applies to all NSF and (presumably) other government research funding, the entire state of modern scientific research is at risk.
Regardless of how you, as an individual, might feel about "DEI," imposing onerous political terms on scientific grants harms everyone in the long term.
So, all these clauses where changed back in Feb/ March. They definitely had to agree to the amendments on their grants, and they still had funding until October 1st. So, I feel like this is revisionist history because they would have been notified way before today to renew thier grant.
So they signed the amendments and spent the money...
Regardless of how you feel about the specific issues here, it’s a good example of why public policy works best when it targets one issue at a time.
If you want to buy cyber security, just do that. Linking cybersecurity payments to social issues reduces how much cybersecurity you can get. Sometimes you can find win-win-win scenarios. There are values that are worth enforcing as a baseline. But you always pay a price somewhere.
I think people are overlooking the most important part:
- Further, violation of this term gave the NSF the right to “claw back” previously approved and transferred funds. This would create a situation where money we’d already spent could be taken back, which would be an enormous, open-ended financial risk.
They're saying the terms give the Trump administration what's essentially a "kill the PSF" button. Which they may want to use for any number of arbitrary reasons. Maybe the PSF runs a conference with a trans speaker, or someone has to be ousted for being openly racist. If it gets the attention of right wing media that's the end.
The "just comply with the law" people are being extremely naive. There can be no assumption of good faith here.
A point made deep in a comment thread by user "rck" below deserves to be a top-level comment - the clawback clause explicitly applies ONLY to violations of existing law:
> NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and recover all funds if recipients, during the term of this award, operate any program in violation of Federal antidiscriminatory laws or engage in a prohibited boycott.
So there's no plausible way that agreeing to these terms would have contractually bound PSF in any way that they were not already bound by statute. Completely silly ideological posturing to turn down the money.
I would hope another funding source with no interest in this kind of legalistic politics emerges. Conditionality like this is going to be much more common for another 3 years at least.
Turning down money is the easiest thing in the world, if you have the fortitude. I think a lot of organisations don't.
It truly is not easy IMO. I am just picking a nit here but "if you have the fortitude" is doing a lot of work. I ran a company for a while and you not only have to have the fortitude, but principles and an ability to weather the consequences of a choice like that. If you are in a tough position and you have employees who are counting on you and the business it is anything but easy. Even if you have fortitude. These decisions can be existential. Of course there are and should be red lines based on your ethics and morals, but none of that is easy. To me it is very hard.
On the one hand, the plain text of the language is not against DEI practices in general -- only DEI practices that are "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws."
On the other hand, the federal government has gone after law firms that are not actually in violation of law and forced settlements due to their DEI programs, so you can't actually trust that you won't be hassled. Additionally, that you won't at minimum have the money clawed back, even if the claims are meritless, as the administration has done on Congressionally appropriated funds repeatedly as part of DOGE efforts.
> "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."
How does the legalese parse here? Does "violation of Federal anti-descrimination laws" apply to the whole thing or just the "discriminatory equity ideology" portion of the statement?
I ask, because being in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws would be a problem whether or not you took the money.
If I'm reading that right, it looks like "do not and will not ... operate any programs... in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws"
Did your lawyer say otherwise? Interested to understand
> We were forced to withdraw our application and turn down the funding, thanks to new language that was added to the agreement requiring us to affirm that we "do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws."
> Our legal advisors confirmed that this would not just apply to security work covered by the grant - this would apply to all of the PSF's activities.
Good for them for putting their money where their mouth is and standing up for what they believe.
Also, this is a golden opportunity for multi-billion dollar tech companies to also do the same and match or double the grant money in support of PSF! Google, AWS, Microsoft, anyone?
> The PSF is a relatively small organization, operating with an annual budget of around $5 million per year, with a staff of just 14.
This might be the bigger story.
How many trillions of dollars depend on Python?
Yes, I mean trillion. Those market caps didn't skyrocket on nothing. A lot of ML systems run on Python. A lot of ML systems are first implemented in Python. Even with more complicated backends a Python layer is usually available, and used. A whole lot of other stuff depends on Python too, but the AI part is obvious.
This is the weird part about our (global![0]) economics that I just don't get. We'll run billions of dollars in the red for a decade or more to get a startup going yet we can't give a million to these backbones? Just because they're open source? It's insane! If we looked at projects like this as a company we'd call their product extremely successful and they'd be able to charge out the wazoo for it. So the main difference is what? That it's open source? That by being open source it doesn't deserve money? I think this is a flaw we probably need to fix. In the very least I want those devs paid enough that they don't get enticed by some large government entity trying to sneak in backdoors or bugs.
[0] it's not just the US, nor is it just capitalist countries. You can point me at grants but let's get honest, $5m is crazy low for their importance. They're providing more than 1000x that value in return.
[side note] I do know big companies often contribute and will put a handful of people on payroll to develop, bug hunt, etc. But even if we include that I'm pretty sure the point still stands. I'm open to being wrong though, I don't know the actual numbers
[P.S.S] seems to parallel our willingness to fund science. Similarly people will cry "but what is the value" from a smartphone communicating over the Internet, with the monetary value practically hitting them in the face.
The PYthon Software Foundation does not develop Python. They manage the package repository, do marketing pro-Python, and distribute money among people they like (in theory to promote the language).
75 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 82.6 ms ] thread(Emphasis mine)
I'm curious if any lawyer folks could weigh in as to whether this language means that the entire sentence requires the mentioned programs to be "in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws." If so, one might argue that a "DEI program" was not in violation of a Federal anti-discrimination law.
Obviously no one would want to have to go to court and this likely would be an unacceptable risk.
Regardless of how you, as an individual, might feel about "DEI," imposing onerous political terms on scientific grants harms everyone in the long term.
It's shocking how fast this administration has gotten institutions to abandon their beliefs, and ones that don't should be rewarded.
So they signed the amendments and spent the money...
If you want to buy cyber security, just do that. Linking cybersecurity payments to social issues reduces how much cybersecurity you can get. Sometimes you can find win-win-win scenarios. There are values that are worth enforcing as a baseline. But you always pay a price somewhere.
Anyway, I signed up to be a PSF member.
- Further, violation of this term gave the NSF the right to “claw back” previously approved and transferred funds. This would create a situation where money we’d already spent could be taken back, which would be an enormous, open-ended financial risk.
They're saying the terms give the Trump administration what's essentially a "kill the PSF" button. Which they may want to use for any number of arbitrary reasons. Maybe the PSF runs a conference with a trans speaker, or someone has to be ousted for being openly racist. If it gets the attention of right wing media that's the end.
The "just comply with the law" people are being extremely naive. There can be no assumption of good faith here.
> NSF reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and recover all funds if recipients, during the term of this award, operate any program in violation of Federal antidiscriminatory laws or engage in a prohibited boycott.
So there's no plausible way that agreeing to these terms would have contractually bound PSF in any way that they were not already bound by statute. Completely silly ideological posturing to turn down the money.
Turning down money is the easiest thing in the world, if you have the fortitude. I think a lot of organisations don't.
On the other hand, the federal government has gone after law firms that are not actually in violation of law and forced settlements due to their DEI programs, so you can't actually trust that you won't be hassled. Additionally, that you won't at minimum have the money clawed back, even if the claims are meritless, as the administration has done on Congressionally appropriated funds repeatedly as part of DOGE efforts.
How does the legalese parse here? Does "violation of Federal anti-descrimination laws" apply to the whole thing or just the "discriminatory equity ideology" portion of the statement?
I ask, because being in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws would be a problem whether or not you took the money.
Did your lawyer say otherwise? Interested to understand
> We were forced to withdraw our application and turn down the funding, thanks to new language that was added to the agreement requiring us to affirm that we "do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws."
> Our legal advisors confirmed that this would not just apply to security work covered by the grant - this would apply to all of the PSF's activities.
Also, this is a golden opportunity for multi-billion dollar tech companies to also do the same and match or double the grant money in support of PSF! Google, AWS, Microsoft, anyone?
How many trillions of dollars depend on Python?
Yes, I mean trillion. Those market caps didn't skyrocket on nothing. A lot of ML systems run on Python. A lot of ML systems are first implemented in Python. Even with more complicated backends a Python layer is usually available, and used. A whole lot of other stuff depends on Python too, but the AI part is obvious.
This is the weird part about our (global![0]) economics that I just don't get. We'll run billions of dollars in the red for a decade or more to get a startup going yet we can't give a million to these backbones? Just because they're open source? It's insane! If we looked at projects like this as a company we'd call their product extremely successful and they'd be able to charge out the wazoo for it. So the main difference is what? That it's open source? That by being open source it doesn't deserve money? I think this is a flaw we probably need to fix. In the very least I want those devs paid enough that they don't get enticed by some large government entity trying to sneak in backdoors or bugs.
[0] it's not just the US, nor is it just capitalist countries. You can point me at grants but let's get honest, $5m is crazy low for their importance. They're providing more than 1000x that value in return.
[side note] I do know big companies often contribute and will put a handful of people on payroll to develop, bug hunt, etc. But even if we include that I'm pretty sure the point still stands. I'm open to being wrong though, I don't know the actual numbers
[P.S.S] seems to parallel our willingness to fund science. Similarly people will cry "but what is the value" from a smartphone communicating over the Internet, with the monetary value practically hitting them in the face.
10 of the 13 people of their staff doesn’t even know how to write a hello world program https://www.python.org/psf/records/staff/
I mean is OSS effective despite the funding problem, or if we gave every maintainer a million quid, would they all stop making tough decisions ?
I suspect that it’s the organisations that define the decision quality - but that’s just a hunch.