A little over a year ago (Mar 8, 2023, according to the automated private message in my history), I came here primarily in search of help with what I guessed to be an epidemic of Python beginners mistakenly downloading the irrelevant, Python 2.x-specific turtle package from PyPI, hoping either to fix deliberately restricted1 Python installations or simply not realizing that it’s part of the standard library. I asked a technical question that helped inform the advice I initially gave on Stack Overflow and have since rewritten for Codidact. Shortly thereafter I saw that others had noted the issue, which was nice.

I ended up sticking around and becoming quite the prolific poster (“2.3k posts created”, apparently). And then I got extremely interested in the “elephant” (or is it a platypus?) of Python packaging. To toot my own horn a bit, I became the first (and thus far only) recipient of the forum’s “Empathetic” gold badge outside of the CPython core dev team2.

But all of that comes to an end now. The recent situation regarding supposed “disturbingly unprofessional conversations”, in turn surrounding a controversial proposal for changes to PSF governance (specifically the last of three proposed in that thread), forced me to reconsider my participation here.

I’m now forced to weigh my interest in discussing topics on a forum like this (as opposed to writing about them on a blog and/or explaining them in Q&A form on Codidact), against my impression of the rules here and how they are interpreted and enforced.

And between:

  • various provisions of the Code of Conduct which I previously didn’t expect to need to worry about, but now find disagreeable;
  • the apparent interpretation of those provisions by CoC WG members (as seen both in explicit statements3 as well as my observations of what does and doesn’t get moderated);
  • the repeated lack of clear communication from leadership about a constellation of related issues (including the meta-issue of how this governance is actually structured and who’s responsible for what), even in supposed attempts at transparency, leading to unaddressed speculation;
  • my general read of the community’s most common viewpoints on Code of Conduct issues (as determined by the content of posts, number of likes, style of rhetoric etc.);
  • various specific things said by other well-recognized and respected community members in the ensuing discussion (I will reply to some of this in a separate post);
  • mistreatment of core dev team members and other highly accomplished members of the community, past and present;
  • the emphasis placed on CoC issues seemingly at the expense of practical, real-world matters that would offer much greater benefit to those supposedly being protected;
  • the various negative interactions I’ve had with other regulars here (and the fact that people don’t seem to understand why I was upset, or perhaps even that I was upset);
  • general frustration with the habitual flow of packaging discussions

I can no longer see myself participating here in any regular capacity.

I am not deleting my account, but henceforth I will post only in this thread, the threads directly related to the situation… and in the future, perhaps to announce project releases.4 I absolutely still believe in FOSS and in the Python programming language (even if there are many things I think it does suboptimally), and am certainly not giving up on such development.5

I have at least three more posts planned for this thread:

  • a more concrete objection to the discussion in the “inclusive communications expectations” thread generally, and how it played out
  • a list which I owe to @FFY00
  • a grab-bag of replies to things said in all of this mess, that I haven’t yet managed to incorporate into other posts.

I hope you’ll bear with me.

  1. In far more ways than disclosed there, actually. ↩

  2. and in less than half the time that it took any of them - no slight intended. ↩

  3. e.g., although this comes from after I had made up my mind. ↩

  4. If any of you should ever have feedback regarding those, please use the corresponding issue tracker or email me privately, as appropriate. ↩

  5. I may even hope for my tools to be included in official python.org distributions in the future - under FOSS licenses I would have no right to forbid it, anyway. ↩