In this episode I discuss the Python Software Foundation with Deb Nicholson. We discuss their contributions to the Python programming community. Learn how this dedicated organization supports the growth and innovation of Python, fostering an ecosystem for developers worldwide. Everything funding open-source projects to organizing community events, discover the initiatives that make the Python Software Foundation a force for positive change in the tech world.

This episode is also available as a podcast, search for “Open Source Security” on your favorite podcast player.

Episode Transcript

Josh Bressers (00:00) Today, open source security is talking to Deb Nicholson, the executive director at the Python Software Foundation. I asked Deb to come talk to us because it’s been a couple of months now, but there was a blog on the PSF website saying that the… Keep me honest here, Deb, but it’s the… Is it grants? Okay.

Deb Nicholson (00:18) The grants program, our outgoing

grants program, ⁓ we had to pause it.

Josh Bressers (00:23) Yes, yes, and I remember, so ⁓ friend of the show, Seth Larson, who’s been a guest a couple of times, I reached out immediately and I’m like, my goodness, is a PSF okay? And he’s like, it’s okay, like you should talk to Deb. So I was like, yes, I should talk to Deb. And then just life and scheduling and everything, and now you’re here. So thank you so much for coming to talk to us Deb, I truly appreciate it. So I’ll just give you the floor for a minute, explain who you are, kind of the PSF, anything you want, and we’ll go from there.

Deb Nicholson (00:51) OK, great. Well, you have my name, and I am the executive director of the Python Software Foundation. We’re a nonprofit that kind of has ⁓ a stewardship of the Python programming language. We support the technical community and its decision-making processes. We ⁓ work to make sure that Python remains a vendor-neutral, ⁓ open source, available to everybody, commodity for anyone to download for any reason.

And then we also work on outreach and ⁓ growing the Python community, which we’ve been doing pretty good at. And Python is now the most popular programming language on GitHub. ⁓ And that means explosive growth in the community as well, which is fantastic. ⁓ The only thing that hasn’t been doing a zip, zip, zip, zip up is our funding. So we’ve…

remain funded and we have a small staff of 13 people for the entire Python programming language ⁓ and community. ⁓ you know, ⁓ as the community grows like this, we haven’t been able to make funding do the same.

Josh Bressers (02:05) Right, right, and you have, I have a blog post that I will put in the show notes for anyone interested, and you have graphs of all this stuff where, in fact, your GitHub graph is remarkable, to say the least, like holy cow, that is bananas. But then yes, your funding graph is down and to the right at the moment, which I know is not unique to the Python Software Foundation, correct?

Deb Nicholson (02:12) Yeah.

Mmm. Yeah.

No.

Right, so, ⁓ you know, anyone who, you know, hasn’t been actively trying to not care about anything to do with tech has probably noticed that the industry has been doing some layoffs and has been doing some belt tightening. ⁓ And that means that all of the entities that rely on Python and use Python have also been, you know, kind of like, maybe we might kind of, you know, rein it in a little bit. We do have some…

big supporters that are kind of in it for the long haul. We have a couple that have even made multi-year commitments to stick with us. But we also kind of depend on a churn of small and medium-sized companies coming in, and maybe a couple of them get big. But that kind of thing has been really kind of slumped. The other thing that nonprofits typically look to are grants. And we do do…

grants sometimes, like we apply for grants when they make sense. The traditional grant making community hasn’t ⁓ completely embraced some of the nitty gritty details of funding open source, but there are a couple of specific tech ⁓ funders that do fund things like this. What we have yet to ever find was someone that specifically wanted to spend money.

to help us do outreach around the world and do workshops and teach-ins ⁓ and small local conferences all around the world. And I kind of had hope that some of the entities that do work on economic development in different places might get a little bit past the bread and butter stuff that they have to take care of first and eventually be like, hey, maybe we do have a little, now that everybody is fed and healthy and everything.

is, you know, like clean water is happening, like maybe now we could pay for some Python classes and workshops. That ⁓ also is not the case in this current economy. I think like even all of those organizations, we talk with some of the folks over at ⁓ the United Nations working on like kind of like digital public goods and things like that and empowerment on the digital level and their funding. They’re like kind of trying to figure out what stuff they can.

still fund over there as well. They’re definitely not looking for new things to fund.

Josh Bressers (04:50) Sure, sure. So I’ve never really thought about the angle of someone like the Python Software Foundation funding like workshops and we’ll say underserved areas, which is, mean, we always hear about the whole, everyone should learn to code and it creates all these economic opportunities. But I mean, yeah, in that case, it kind of would that I need to think about this. I like this.

Deb Nicholson (05:10) Yeah,

yeah, so ⁓ one of my favorite things at PyCon US is the PyLadies lunch and women from around the world get up and like sometimes they’ll talk about like a thing that happened this year or like a new job or they’ll just share news. It’s just a super positive room and everyone’s like, yay! ⁓ But like the first year I attended someone came and said like I’m from this very small town in Brazil. No one’s ever heard of it so I’m even gonna bother to say the name she said and

And no one from my town had ever left. Like not left to go live somewhere else, just left. And she said, I learned to code and it has been life changing. I am now connected to an international community of programmers and Pythonistas and PyLadies. I’m teaching like all my nieces and nephews to code because it has like changed my entire life. It has changed like everyone in my family’s life. ⁓

just could not be underestimated the impact that it has. So, you know, if we’re able to do that, and it’s open source, like you don’t have to pay to download Python. ⁓ We have like a very enthusiastic community that wants to help you learn, so you don’t have to pay for expensive classes, you don’t have to get into MIT, although they will also teach you Python. You know, it’s like just people are ready for you to come in and help you get up to speed and…

and help you get a job and help you make your professional network. ⁓ And ⁓ in my mind, that’s kind of what the promise of open source is. If we were gonna, like, what’s the point of open source? ⁓ it so that you can make Netflix work on a weird computer you made in your yard? And it’s like, yes, but also it would be nice if it empowered ⁓ people who want to participate in this amazing. ⁓

place that we live in where you can do so many things with computers. ⁓ So I’m really glad that we are able to do that. ⁓ You know, if someone’s motivated and wants to write us a two million dollar check after listening to this, let me know. But yeah, it’s ⁓ unfortunately like in non-profit land, like ⁓ the more somebody needs money, the harder it is to find it. So if you… ⁓

You know, if you ⁓ said like, like just thinking about like the like how fundraising works. If you live in a very wealthy community and your marching band, say, is renowned, like 200 kids with like horns, which, you know, ⁓ if you have kids, it’s nice to have them go do something like that. And and I was in the marching band. So I know I’m talking about here. But like very wealthy, privileged kids like parents just shower that with money.

Like, but if you are, and this is a total opposite end of the spectrum, we’re somewhere in the middle. If you are unhoused and mentally unwell and kind of shouty, like no one wants to give you money. So like, there’s this, ⁓ it’s really difficult like ⁓ to get money, raise money for the people who need it the most.

And ⁓ one thing that’s really great about the Python Software Foundation is that people are like, I’m a Python programmer and you want to be a Python programmer. I want to help. ⁓ And so we get this little magic of like, you’re going to be like me in a couple of years. Like we’re the same, we’re buds. ⁓ And that like kind of camaraderie among the Python community is like what kind of makes it work. But it’s still like, it’s still very hard to keep up with explosive.

Josh Bressers (08:48) ⁓ I have no doubt. I know that. Okay. So let’s talk about your grant program for a moment just to make sure we understand what’s going on. So explain what the Python is it the PSF grant for whatever the name is, you can correct me, but explain what that is and kind of the state it is in. Okay. Nice.

Deb Nicholson (09:03) We’ve actually never named it. It’s just the grants program. But it’s here.

I don’t know. ⁓ But it is, I guess people probably call it the PSF Grants Program. ⁓ yeah, so for a bunch of years, and I’ve only been here for three years, so I’m not sure what exactly happened in those very formative years. ⁓ We’ve been looking at, hey, we run PyCon US, but people run PyCons all over the world. Maybe we should sponsor them.

and maybe we should help with like other events in those areas. And ⁓ we set up like a work group because we’re very like nonprofit. There’s always a community. There’s always a work group. So at first just the board was voting on giving grants to like smaller local PyCons and events and then eventually set up a grants work group to kind of look through all of those things. And they do all those small ones. If there’s like a large one where someone’s like.

hey, we, like, and for us large would be like over $12,000. So, and it used to be 10, but like inflation, but, and those ones wouldn’t go to the board, but we get like a massive pile of requests for like anywhere from like 600 bucks to like $2,500, like all these like, you know, ⁓ amazing stories where people were like, I’m gonna be able to.

do like a two hour Python workshop for like 60 people for like 600 bucks. And we’re like, that’s amazing. Or like, we’re gonna run a three day conference and we got the venue donated, but we don’t have food and there’s no food in the area. Could you do $2,500 to make sure everybody doesn’t starve during the day? And we’re like, yes, that’s amazing. like, these are very cost effective, like smaller grants. It’s just that there’s…

a lot of them. And then some of the events, and this is again, it’s good news, right too is that some of them have grown over time. Like they started out as like two or three hundred person events and now they’re like doing eight hundred people. And like, you know, maybe the economy isn’t quite as rough as it was when they started. So now they have to pay real money for the venue because it can’t just be in a donated classroom or two. And so, you know, so like the cost of things increase as you are successful.

⁓ And then the you know the the asks to us increase because the event has been successful. We don’t want to Punish events for being successful. So like we try to kind of you know meter it out like so that we’re funding some of the small new groups and some of the like, you know Mid-range like, know successful groups that have grown their event over time ⁓

And so these are the kinds of events like, ⁓ let’s see, last year I went to PyCon Africa. We did a big sponsorship there because it was like the whole continent. It’s like a massive group of people to serve. And, ⁓ you know, so we did a big grant there, but like sometimes we’ll also do like a Django Girls workshop for like 400 bucks. So it’s like a pretty wide range like ⁓ of what we fund in its range, but it’s still all like

you know, pretty modest, like no one’s asking us for 50k. I think they like whatever we’ve done to like socialize what the grants program is about, like we don’t get asked for those levels of money. ⁓ But ⁓ yeah, and it’s all over the world. We have we funded events in in South America. We fund events in the APAC region. We funded events in like Australia and New Zealand.

⁓ We have funded a lot of events in Africa. We have funded events in India, in Scandinavia, like all over Europe, both Western and Eastern. There’s just a lot of Python events and a lot of people that are really excited to host events and teach people Python.

Josh Bressers (13:02) That’s awesome. mean, and look, Python is like super hip right now, right? Like the whole, all of this AI, everything we keep hearing about, like it’s all Python. It’s Python all the way down, you know, which is amazing.

Deb Nicholson (13:14) Yeah.

And I think it’s important to note that the AI and the data analysis stuff, the ways that people use it in different parts of the world are really different. ⁓ When I was at PyCon Africa last year, my friend was telling me about, I’m looking at ways to deploy AI to monitor livestock health. And I was like, I don’t know anyone in the US that is doing something like that. ⁓

You know, or people are looking at like all different kinds of things just depending on what is important to them and what their community uses and what they would like to automate, what they would like more data on. And so it’s different everywhere you go. And so it’s really important for like there to be practitioners in all these different places that are looking at like, you know, what feels like a net positive as opposed to like exploitive or ⁓ what feels like.

you know, like something useful as opposed to like, well, now it comes with this massive thing that makes the computer hum for 10 extra minutes, but nobody knows why or cares, right? I mean, like AI, it’s to play like correctly and targeted, like, wow, that’s so great. Like you, you automated this thing that was really annoying for me. But when it’s like something you don’t want, it’s like, okay, I think I have enough ⁓ pictures of guys from Miami Vice with eight fingers. I, I’m good, you know.

And if that’s your jam, like, okay, whatever. But like, you know, if you have some other use or something that would be more useful to you, that’s why it’s important for us to empower computer users all over the world so they can decide what they want.

Josh Bressers (14:56) Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, and then how is the grant program related to the Python Software Foundation overall in like the funding? How does that look in this context?

Deb Nicholson (15:06) Yeah, it is 100 % a PSF project. It is 100 % from our budget. So typically, kind of like a 10 cent history of the PSF is that we, know, creative programming language, and then people were like, we should meet and hang out or do a meeting or something. And he had a really good keynote like two, three years back where he said,

So I set up the first one and I just said like, let’s have the cheap sandwiches every day. And then the next year they were like, we’re going to find someone else to organize the event. And I’m like, that’s such a program of response, right? To be like, well, which sandwich is the cheapest? We’ll just eat that one every day. ⁓ And so then we, ⁓ so one of our main activities in addition to like having the repository and hosting the package index was ⁓ to run an event. And the event,

Josh Bressers (15:43) Nice. Nice.

Exactly.

Deb Nicholson (16:04) Like back in the heyday, especially if you had like a staff and a half or something or two and a half staff for the year to run all your stuff, if you had a 3,500 person event and everybody was like, I’ll pay to be in the front. I’ll pay for, can I fund open bar for four hours? Sounds like a terrible idea, but yes, I guess we’ll take that money. And I don’t know if we did that specifically. Those are events that.

I witnessed ⁓ in that kind of heyday of like US conferences where it was just like, whoa, you could just be like, we have a booth and like people would show up and shower you with cash. So we were like, wow, like, well, we’ve already paid the event staff and like we have a sys admin, like what else could we do? And then that extra was like where we started looking at, well, let’s fund some educational events. ⁓ And so like we weren’t,

Originally like a foundation at the beginning of the programming language either that kind of came a little bit later and then we got more staff and then Just throwing open-source software over the wall was like also something that was totally acceptable 20 years ago and just be like you can email info at and we’ll answer it basically never and people were like, okay That’s just not how it works anymore. Like you have to answer info at now

Josh Bressers (17:17) Yup, yup.

Yeah, right, right.

Deb Nicholson (17:32) And in a

timely fashion. also like, it also like, cause we had volunteers doing that kind of stuff for a while. And it was like, so like once every two weeks for like an hour, like that should blow out the whole queue, right? And it’s like, yeah, that was true at one point and it’s not true anymore. Now people are like, if you wait, if they have to wait a whole 24 hours to see their password, they’re, they’re very mad. ⁓ Yeah. So. ⁓

Josh Bressers (17:44) You

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Deb Nicholson (17:59) So we’ve tried to kind of meet the community need there. So we’ve hired more people and to deliver on just the core offering, which went from like, I guess a volunteer could handle that to like, ⁓ no. And now because the Python package index, it’s like, it’s a bunch of things that people from the internet gave us, which is like, that’s so nice. But then also, geez, what’s in here? ⁓

you know, at the same time. So now we also have someone who looks at the security and patterns of like malware and ways that PyPI can be exploited because we’re giving a gift to the community if it’s like a sweater with holes and moths, it’s not really a very nice gift, right? So like we try to make sure that the, you know, everything is secure and that you can rely on what you’re from us, you know.

Josh Bressers (18:44) Yeah. Yeah.

Deb Nicholson (18:54) But that’s eaten into like what comes in. And now we do get some targeted funding specifically for CPython, specifically for security, specifically for like handling the, you know, the like, geez, what did you put on PyPI today ⁓ issue? And, you know, so like, so that’s like all kind of like eaten into like what we spend on. ⁓ And then, ⁓ and then events like since the pandemic have never totally bounced back. So like,

It used to be like, wonder what we’ll do with the half a million dollars we make off this conference. ⁓ That’s extra after we pay everyone who worked on the conference and after we pay the venue and after we pay the food and beverage and everything. And now it’s like, oof, yikes. Well, ⁓ so we’re slowly crawling back up to numbers, like pre-pandemic numbers for PyCon US. ⁓

And, you know, like in terms of attendance, so like the first year back, like instead of selling out a 3,500 person conference, it was like about 1,800. And then, you know, about like 2,100 and then a couple more hundred more, like before this year. And then this year, a lot of people’s feelings changed about traveling to the United States for a conference. So that kind of like, you know, also was a little bit, you know.

Josh Bressers (20:00) Yeah. Yeah.

Yep, yep, for sure.

Deb Nicholson (20:20) And you don’t get to tell a conference venue like, oh, we’re gonna like 80 % of the people we were expecting. Could you just like cut all the expenses by 80 %? And some of them they will. They’re like, we could put a little less of that $9 a cup coffee out that y’all seem to drink so much of. And it’s like, okay. But like nothing else. Like you can’t cut on the other like kind of tasks.

Josh Bressers (20:27) Right.

right.

Deb Nicholson (20:49) and workflows. There’s just no way to do that.

Josh Bressers (20:53) Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I’ve helped with conferences. You often pay and sign contracts years in advance. Right? So, ⁓ my goodness.

Deb Nicholson (21:01) Pittsburgh we signed before the pandemic and then we’re supposed to be

there for the first two years of the pandemic and they said, we’ll let you off the hook if you come back in four years and pay whatever the going rate is then. And we’re like, and our other option is to just let you keep all the money that we put as a deposit. And they’re like, mm-hmm. And we’re like, okay, I guess we’ll do that. So.

Josh Bressers (21:23) Wow.

I mean, that’s a better deal than I heard from a lot of people, so.

Deb Nicholson (21:28) Right, some people just got like, well, you know, we have some weird clause that we wrote in that says like, even if the event doesn’t happen, we keep like some chunk of your money. it’s like, and I’m sure this was before I got here, but I’m sure that was like ⁓ some fierce negotiation on the part of my predecessor to be like, how about if we come back like after our next scheduled place?

Josh Bressers (21:37) Yep. Yep.

Sure, sure. Wow. Wow. Wild.

Deb Nicholson (21:54) Yeah, yeah.

And so it’s like, takes a really long time for us to make significant changes to PyCon just because of the, like the lead time on planning the event. So, you know.

Josh Bressers (22:08) Yeah,

yeah, for sure. Okay, I wanna talk before we run out of time about just some overall funding at the PSF because I know you have some big sponsors. take, I mean, anyone can donate, right? You don’t have to be a huge company. And you also, one of the things in your blog post that I want to call out a little bit is you mentioned that…

AI, the AI companies we’ll say are not sponsoring at the level. Maybe everyone thinks they should. And I completely agree with this viewpoint, by the way, I think the AI universe is rife with cash and Python is. It is the handle on that meat grinder, you know, that they’re, they’re taking the data in and, outcomes of the product. So.

Deb Nicholson (22:39) Yeah.

Yeah,

I think that, so I think there’s a couple reasons and I know some people are like, know, like grumpy robot people don’t care about us or whatever and I’m like, I don’t think it’s that. I think these companies are a little younger. They don’t have, they’re like, ⁓ should we have an HR person or maybe somebody to talk to foundations about donating money? And like, you know, there’s probably like six people like, please hire someone for HR, you know, and I’m like, yes, you should probably do that first. And so like,

Josh Bressers (23:06) Yeah, yeah.

Deb Nicholson (23:20) They’re still kind of in this startup mode. I do think also ⁓ one of the things that happens because it’s kind of like a layer removed is that people don’t entirely understand what it means that Python is open source. So like, it’s like, ⁓ you know, like when I first got this job, I was like, I’m the executive director of the Python Software Foundation. So I also work at a nonprofit. I was at an event with another nonprofit and they’re like, that’s not a nonprofit. And I’m like, I can assure you it is like.

But they’re like, how could you be the most used programming language on GitHub and be like a charity? I’m like, magic, I guess. But we really are. ⁓ So I think they don’t have kind of the muscle of understanding how to take care of their upstream stuff and make sure that they, you know, like, because if you build your business on another code base, you should at one, you know, just kind of take a look under there like, what?

Josh Bressers (23:59) Nice.

Deb Nicholson (24:19) What’s under there? Who’s doing that? are they okay? because, you know, but that’s, I think with newer industries, like a lot of them are probably also looking around at the field and they’re like, you know, it’s like the ⁓ Docker management companies. Like one year you went to conferences and there were like 15 Docker management companies. And I’m like, there’s no way there’s going to be 15 of these here next year. And I think a lot of the AI companies are looking around and they’re like,

Josh Bressers (24:21) Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Deb Nicholson (24:49) We have to really focus on making sure we’re one of the companies that’s here next year, and then we can get back to some of the other stuff. So I think that’s one, still kind of feeling new and still kind of feeling the hot breath of a million competitors on the back of their neck. And then I think the other thing is that they don’t entirely… ⁓ If the best thing about open source for you is that it’s free, then you aren’t completely getting the total value of

Josh Bressers (25:18) Yes. Yes.

Deb Nicholson (25:18) Do you know what I mean? it’s

like, like, I mean, this is the case with anything like, ⁓ it’s this, ⁓ it’s this free operating system with like, crufty fonts, but you don’t have to pay. And it’s like, this is not a great, like, you know, selling point or whatever. ⁓ But if you said like, but then you can customize it so it’s exactly how you want and you can build hooks into like the things that you want to talk to and you can write optimizations and share them, you know.

Josh Bressers (25:32) Yeah, yeah.

Deb Nicholson (25:46) for anyone else who is doing what you’re doing to make their work better. so we haven’t quite gotten across the threshold where it’s like AI companies are like, wait, how could we write a few libraries that would make Python more awesome for us? And it’s like, yes, you could. And you could put them on this index. yours could become the industry standard ⁓ if it’s good and people can figure out how to use it, which kind of

makes you more likely to be one of those companies that’s around in 15 years. I mean, in a year, instead of out of that group of 15, right? And so, I think, yeah, I think they’re not quite getting the value of like open source and being truly involved as a partner. And, you know, and again, like if you feel like your company is like fighting for its survival this year, then maybe donating isn’t at the top of your list.

Josh Bressers (26:41) For sure, for sure. Okay, so let’s, let me ask a slightly different question based on this. So there’s the altruistic aspect and there’s the, we’ll say PR aspect, because obviously if you are a donor to the PSF, you’re gonna get your logo on the website, you’ll your logo at the conference, things like that, know, depending upon how you’re donating and what you’re doing. But if I’m an employee at an AI company right now, and I think donating to the PSF is the right thing to do,

Deb Nicholson (26:46) Okay.

Josh Bressers (27:10) But what about the other benefits? Because joining a foundation isn’t just about altruism necessarily, there are other aspects to this that can bring you benefits, yes?

Deb Nicholson (27:19) Yeah, so we are not a 501c6 where you get to like buy a seat on our board, but ⁓ we do talk with our donors and we do like consider them partners. like, you know, it’s like the donation is part one of saying like, hey, like here’s one thing I can bring to the table. And then we do talk to our other sponsors about like what’s going on, what trends are you seeing? Like what kinds of things would, ⁓ you know, do you think would support?

Python users like the ones that you employ and so we’re like always in conversation with our ⁓ With our especially with our bigger partners like that and we kind of understand like what their usage is and you know and it proves them to show up for these conferences where we talk about like What’s the future of the language like what is going to be coming next? Like what kinds of changes are coming down the pike? What kinds of security improvements speed improvements etc, etc?

And if you’re not like part of that conversation, then you’re gonna be like, know, like surprise, like your build broke. And it’s like, why would you do that when all you have to do is show up at a couple events or a couple meetings during the year and like have a nice relationship with the foundation that your code is built on top of, like as opposed to be like.

Josh Bressers (28:26) Yeah.

Deb Nicholson (28:40) We surprised you again. I mean, you could sign up for the mailing list. You could like watch it, watch all the repose on GitHub. But if you’re not part of the conversation, you won’t like Python’s big now. So you won’t totally understand to like, okay. Like some string of numbers and letters is changing. Like, yeah. And it’s like, but if you’re part of the community and you’re part of the conversation, it’ll be like, wait a minute. Everything we do is built on the GIL Like maybe I want to pay attention. We’re going to.

Josh Bressers (28:49) Yes.

Deb Nicholson (29:09) try and make that smooth, but like it’s also like if you’re you know if your boss is like how can we make this faster and it’s like you know like well people are working on it but if we’re if we’re still using 2.7 or something like on our machines like we’re not going to really be able to take advantage of any of those improvements. So there are people we do occasionally especially when we’re doing more posting on X like people would like my 2.7 isn’t doing a thing and I’m like

I don’t know how long we can help you with that. mean, you know, so, and it’s hard, because it was like, it was a big break in compatibility, again, way before my time, I’m sure there were reasons, but we are, you know, we do try to make sure that the breaks in compatibility are smooth and like well signed, but yeah, like being part of the community is how you know what’s going on, how you gain trust, like how you,

Josh Bressers (29:44) Yeah. Ugh.

Yeah, yeah.

Deb Nicholson (30:07) you know, get to, you know, be at the table and not have people roll your eyes. Like, of course XYZ company wants blah, blah, you know, but like, like material participation in those conversations, like gets you like the respect so that when you speak and you express concerns or like you offer to like, could we, could we work on this? Like people are excited to say yes.

Josh Bressers (30:31) For sure. And for anyone listening who doesn’t know a lot about Python, Deb just talked about two things that if you’re in the Python universe are really cool and interesting. what the global interpreter lock, which is how Python handles threading. the GIL is gone now, right? If I’m remembering.

Deb Nicholson (30:47) Well, so it’s

optional is like, so again, we did learn something about backwards compatibility. like you, know, ⁓ and so yeah, so you can do, there are ⁓ ways to use free threaded Python. ⁓ I would ⁓ maybe I’ll send you ⁓ a blog that is a little bit more detailed on that, cause that is, ⁓ that gets like into the weeds really fast if you’re not a core dev. ⁓

Josh Bressers (30:52) Haha, yeah.

Yeah. yeah. It’s, it’s wild. Yup. Yup. And then

also you mentioned the, the change from Python two to Python three, which was a breaking change and it changed a whole bunch of stuff. Like I hated it at first, but it’s grown on me and I think it was all for the best, but yes, it was a painful transition time for sure. For anyone involved.

Deb Nicholson (31:18) Yes.

Probably the first Python meetup I ever attended, there was a talk from a 10-year-old who, in his 10-minute talk, was why Python should go back to two. And he had slides and everything, and he was he was like full of fire. And I was like, what’s going on? I had just joined because I was coming from a more generalized open source and free software background and was like,

Josh Bressers (31:43) Ahaha, nice.

Deb Nicholson (31:58) yeah, it’d be fun to learn like actual programming language and see what’s going on over here. And I was like, wow, what’s going on with this backwards compatibility? But yeah, and that kid must be, it’s probably 30 something now, right? Like, it’s been a really long time.

Josh Bressers (32:06) What have I gotten myself into? Nice.

Yeah, no doubt. It’s been forever. I know, I know.

Okay, okay, so we’re coming to the end, And let’s end this one on if anyone is looking to get involved at the PSF or donate to the PSF or kind of like, what can we do if we’re just, you know, mere mortals? What can we do if we’re part of an organization? I know there’s a lot of paths here and kind of a lot of twisty decision trees. So fill us in.

Deb Nicholson (32:21) Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So ⁓ if you’re at a company that doesn’t already work with the PSF, like I’d love to set up a meeting. If your company isn’t quite ready for that yet, I would see if they would let you start a Python guild so you can start having conversations with the other Python users in your company. ⁓ If that doesn’t apply to you and you just are like, how can I plug into the community? I would say try and find a meetup group. Like the meetup groups are like,

Josh Bressers (32:56) Thanks.

Deb Nicholson (33:06) robust, amazing, friendly, exciting. There are a couple that are still meeting just online if you also don’t like leaving your house. So like find a meetup group. ⁓ Python has so many choices at every part of the learning process that having friends to learn with is really exciting and really key. Also helps you build that network so you can get a Python job. ⁓ If you want to specifically help the PSF.

⁓ We are always looking for folks that want to volunteer on PyCon US. So we have the program committee, people who volunteer on site at the conference, throw a talk into the CFP when it’s open later this fall. ⁓ And yeah, and basically like, ⁓ yeah, let us know if there’s something else you want to do. We have a bunch of working groups that are always working on outreach or diversity. ⁓

metrics within the Python community or like the technical community goes and talks on Discuss ⁓ So there’s a lot of places that you could kind of find to get involved.

Josh Bressers (34:10) There’s definitely something for everyone, yes. And obviously, Patch is welcome, right? If there’s something you don’t like about Python, getinvolves from it, prs and bugs and.

Deb Nicholson (34:13) Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. And like, and honestly, just kind of like trying to like look at like, I would say for any open source project, if you want to do patches, like I would like make contact first and say like, hey, I’m considering a patch just so you don’t duplicate work that’s already being done. But also if there are some other parameters or scope on that bug that you don’t know about, like I don’t want you to waste your work. So I would see contact the person in charge of that part of the code base before you

Josh Bressers (34:33) Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Deb Nicholson (34:50) sink many hours into, you like, you you don’t want to, you don’t want to make a steak dinner for a vegan, right? So like, just check in before you spend a lot of time and money and effort or whatever on stuff. ⁓ But yeah, we’re usually very friendly and like, you know, unless you’ve managed to find something deprecated that nobody’s in charge of. ⁓ And then, you know, there are a lot of places to come and find like where the right person is to talk to.

Josh Bressers (34:57) Exactly.

100%.

Yeah,

yeah, for sure, for sure. Awesome. Deb, this has been a treat. I wanna thank you so much.

Deb Nicholson (35:23) Thank you so much for having me on. I’m really glad we get to talk about the foundation. think this is a little off your regular path here, or let’s usually talk about security.

Josh Bressers (35:31) Okay.

well, we’ll say securities in quotes maybe for a bit. No. So this is a super important aspect, I think, of open source. And I think it’s very related to security. And I’m going to kind of jump on my soapbox here for a moment at the end. But the sustainability of open source projects is, I think, the most risk, the highest risk issue I think open source has today is how I would describe it. Where if the PSF isn’t funded, the Python language isn’t funded.

Deb Nicholson (35:36) ⁓

Josh Bressers (36:00) And literally modern society depends on Python functioning because if Python has problems, like society is literally going to collapse. I’m that is not a joke, right? That is not meant to be. It’s true though, right? There are, you think Go is in the same situation. There’s all these languages, kind of all, you know, NPM same deal where the sustainability of these projects and even if a small open source, you know, like there are Python modules that are equally important, potentially more so.

Deb Nicholson (36:10) Wow.

Josh Bressers (36:28) And so I think from a security perspective, like thinking about the risk of this all, this is a hugely important topic. So from my perspective, talking to you is one of the most important security topics on the top of my mind today.

Deb Nicholson (36:40) Amazing.

Yeah, it’s, I do know there are lots and lots of things that rely on Python and at all different levels. We participated in this conversation a while ago about what Python is the US government using in critical stuff like defense or control of water or anything like that. And I’m like, I have no idea, but it feels like the answer is some.

Josh Bressers (37:09) everywhere.

Deb Nicholson (37:09) But they don’t necessarily

tell us. The other thing I would say that is like, I’m a big science fiction nerd. And when I think about like, you know, like a Star Wars versus a Star Trek future, you know, like, no, for real, like the Star Wars where everybody mines on dusty planets and there’s like one planet of ultra wealthy people in control of everything. I’m like, oh, but like, I feel like open source leads us to the Star Trek universe. Like, you know.

post-scarcity, where everybody gets to participate. Because I think it’s really important how we gatekeep access to computing. And Python, think, is one of our best tools on kind of democratizing small d, democratizing access to computing. And getting us to the Star Trek, I don’t want to mine on a dusty planet.

Josh Bressers (38:00) Yes, agreed, agreed.

I know, right? Yes.

Deb Nicholson (38:07) Yeah, it just looks,

yeah, with like a tentacled overseer, this sounds terrible.

Josh Bressers (38:13) my goodness, best ending ever. Deb, thank you so much.

Deb Nicholson (38:17) Thank you, Josh