[EvanAnderson]

I'm an outsider who only knows Guido van Rossum by way of interviews his writing.

Assuming your quote is what the original text said (I don't disbelieve you-- but nobody can see it to confirm) why would this have violated community standards? Is there some rule about not mentioning "un-persons" or something?

It's very confusing.

Edit: Answering my own question. There appears to be a kerfuffle afoot. Apparently the Steering Council has suspended a core developer for 3 months[0] but isn't naming the suspended developer or citing specific reasons why (per [1] and sparking a call for a vote of no confidence in the council which did not succeed).

Apparently even mentioning the suspended person (without naming them) is enough for even Guido van Rossum to be censored. Wow.

Edit 2: The suspended developer is Tim Peters[3].

Edit 3: Altered paragraph "Edit:" from "...or the reason why[1] (" to "...or citing specific reasons why (per [1]".

Edit 4: Added "which did not succeed" after "...vote of no confidence in the council".

[0] https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-co...

[1] https://discuss.python.org/t/calling-for-a-vote-of-no-confid...

[3] https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestr...

[krick]

That's kinda nuts, but kinda absolutely in line with all trends of the last 5 years. I remember similar shit happening in Linux community (the shit won, naturally).

But, anyway, who is the "Steering Council" and how come they have more influence than the 2 people who basically created python the language and python the community?

[zitterbewegung]

When Guido stopped being the sole leader (BDFL) he was replaced by the steering council which is elected and has the purpose of doing the following (Defined in PEP 13 which is the current governance model of Python. Right now Guido is a core developer at this time. See https://peps.python.org/pep-0013/#the-steering-council

[krick]

That's pretty obvious. The question was, who are these people, specifically, and why they were chosen and given that much power. I mean, I can see the names, but while I don't have to be told who Tim Peters or Guido van Rossum are, I have no clue who these guys are and what their actual contributions are.

[dekhn]

Gregory P. Smith Emily Morehouse Barry Warsaw Thomas Wouter

I've worked with gps and twouter before at Google; they were two of the leaders of the python ecosystem. twouter is a highly technically skilled contributor- when I found a 2 bugs in the Python runtime, he was the person who helped me fix them (bug 1: RPC calls from C++ to Python delivered during interpreter shutdown caused crash, bug 2: importing the same library twice with two different names caused crash) upstream.

gps apparently is a core contributor to cpython but I he did mainly administrative work afaict when I was at Google. From what I can tell, gps is the primary instigator in this incident.

Barry Warsaw: was lead maintainer of jython, I think also involved in the guts of cpython for some time.

Emily Morehouse: I hadn't heard of her before but it looks like she is a core python developer: https://emilyemorehouse.com/blog/015-my-path-to-becoming-a-p... who implemented some key PEPs.

[tgma]

That's what happens when Googlers have power these days. They are so used to censorship being forced down their throats at Google that it seems super normal for them to do it everywhere.

[stogot]

In line with the trends, as the grandparent said. People who claim tolerance are intolerant

[joshuamorton]

There is an election process, and all core python team members vote on the SC (https://peps.python.org/pep-8105/#results) for a 1-year term.

Greg, Thomas, and Barry are all old guard (20+ years as core devs), Emily and Pablo are relatively more recent, but still have 5+ years as core devs and are I believe more actively doing python feature development. All of these folks have served on the steering council before, some for 3-4 years.

Guido has served on the SC before, but has been stepping back recently.

[plg94]

I don't have a factual answer for you (be interested in one, too), only a cheek-in-tongue one: It's like politics, the only thing you have to do to get elected is to get people to vote for you. And often the vote is only among people who _want_ to be elected (and in a position of power), massively reducing the pool of good candidates.

[zahlman]

> The question was, who are these people, specifically, and why they were chosen and given that much power.

They are core developers elected by an internal process among the developers. See PEP 13 for details: https://peps.python.org/pep-0013/#the-steering-council

> I have no clue who these guys are and what their actual contributions are.

Barry Warsaw (https://barry.warsaw.us) is another of the "old guard" who can be pictured standing next to Peters and GvR fairly easily. He gained the title of "Friendly Language Uncle For Life" (FLUFL), and has previously been the project lead for Mailman and lead maintainer for Jython. He was the release manager for Python 2.2 (as far as I can tell, the first time this position existed), 2.6 and 3.0, and shared the role for 2.3. His name is all over 2.x-era process documentation. Prior to GvR's actual retirement in 2018, there was an April Fools' Day announcement of his resignation in 2009, authored by Barry Warsaw and Brett Cannon. This was accompanied by a hidden option (still available!) which changes the `!=` syntax to `<>`. Refs: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4007289/ ; https://peps.python.org/pep-0401/ .

Emily Morehouse (https://emilyemorehouse.com/) was the PyCon co-chair for 2019 and chair for 2020 and 2021. She has done project management for Axios and mentoring for PyLadies (https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-emi...).

Gregory P. Smith has been a core dev since about 2003 and has notably worked on `hashlib` and `subprocess` (https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-nomination-gre...).

Pablo Galindo Salgado (https://github.com/pablogsal) was the release manager for 3.10 and 3.11, and Thomas Wouters was/is the release manager for 3.12 and 3.13. Wouters has also previously served as a PSF Board member and was a PSF founder (https://www.python.org/nominations/elections/2020-python-sof...).

[germanjoey]

Looks like some kind of power play...

Originally discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41234180

[PaulHoule]

My experience is that discussions of bylaw changes tend to get heated and that trying to change your bylaws is like Russian Roulette, that is maybe 1/6 of the time there is some disaster which is either the end of he organization or that results in a major loss of members.

[lovecg]

Wow, just wow. Reading all these makes me really worried about supporting anything built on Python long term. This creates an impression of a self-destructing dying community.

[BadHumans]

This is silly. The Python Foundation could die tonight and people will still build in Python for years to come because believe it or not, most people do not know or care about the happenings of these organizations.

[kamaal]

Yeah, but my experience with Perl shows, once something like this happens, its pretty much downhill from there.

Not saying Python is going away tomorrow, in fact it might remain actively developed and used for decades to come. But with proactive thought, improvement and initiative gone. Competition will replace you in time. That's just how it works.

[bun_terminator]

Also see for the last python release notes for some hardcore politics injected right into your tooling language. Python is unfortunately radioactive and can't be used responsibly anymore. They're halfway to selfdestruction

[xigoi]

What specifically are you talking about? I couldn’t find anything political in the Python 3.12 release notes.

[gaganyaan]

They probably mean the poem at the bottom here:

https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3120/

Under "And now for something completely different"

[xigoi]

Ah. That’s really inappropriate for a technical document.

[srid]

Unnecessary politics in certain tech spheres is still a norm.

For example, here's GNOME the desktop being concerned about climate change:

https://discourse.gnome.org/t/question-to-candidates-the-boa...

[fivestones]

It seems like the point is, you can see the same issue in very different ways. Did you read it from the bottom to the top? I was cringing until I got to the end and found the message to “Now read it bottom to top”. Still not saying it belongs in a technical document but it felt way less abrasive after reading it both directions.

[bun_terminator]

The spicy bit is that this is the first release that contained such a political message. And also the first one that is managed by the guy who started the mess of this post, too! Not exactly sure if he's the one who put it in there, but it's one heck of a coincidence.

[mc32]

What the hell, has everyone caught and gone gung-ho on censorship? What the actual f*** is this?

How in the hell do you have the balls or ovaries to ban the creator --for something so inane. It's like a highscool supe who gets no respect and will at every chance show you the little power she has in such a classless way. So utterly petty defying belief.

I hope those dweebs get voted out pronto. That's an absurd abuse of power.

People who trip like that have no business having any power or control.

[zaptheimpaler]

Most people haven't gone crazy, the kinds of people on this board are experts in silencing dissent and making it appear that way. I really hope the Python community can hold an open poll or discussion on a forum not controlled by the fascists and force the board to resign.

[khazhoux]

> gung-ho on censorship? What the actual f** is this?

Unintenti**l irony

[mc32]

I hope that's just a rib. Else, one should be able to tell self control over stamping authority over others. Very few people openly speak their inner monologue, uncensored just releasing their stream of consciousness like a delirious hobo down a stench filled alleyway.

[beedeebeedee]

I speak my "inner monologue" and it is nothing like delirium or stench. Not sure who you are or who you're hanging out with, but better to get the stench out than let it fester.

[khazhoux]

It was funny that you censored yourself, in a comment about censorship, that's all :-)

[plg94]

You did have any opportunity to rewrite your sentence to use any other word than f**, one that did not require self-censoring. Yet you did not. Why?

[the_real_cher]

there's a difference between being polite and having your post removed entirely

[tourmalinetaco]

Of course, but it still elicits a reasonable chuckle.

[FireBeyond]

> It's like a highscool supe who gets no respect and will at every chance show you the little power

Sayre's Law, effectively, the smaller the stakes the bigger the fights/politics.

See also: HOAs, academia.

[zaptheimpaler]

Re: the vote of no confidence [1]. Looks like most devs disagreed with the vote and have opted to let the council continue but transfer the "HR" Code of Conduct duties to the PSF.

[1] https://discuss.python.org/t/calling-for-a-vote-of-no-confid...

[dilap]

They suspended Tim Peters? That is insane.

[threatofrain]

The Python steering committee also threw the kitchen sink of accusations at him. IMO it speaks to character when you throw arguments like an adversarial lawyer. Not the kind of person you want to be around for work or life.

[zahlman]

To be clear, the accusations in question came from the Code of Conduct Work Group; the Steering Council simply "acted on their recommendations".

I don't expect any positive changes if said Work Group becomes directly responsible for such disciplinary actions.

[em-bee]

is the steering council able to remove messages without a recommendation? i think that if two "independent" groups have to cooperate then that's better than one group being able to act alone. now the question is how independent are these groups really. i saw another comment drawing that into question.

[rjmorris]

I don't understand why you said they didn't explain the reason for the 3-month ban. Your link [0] lays out the reasons.

[EvanAnderson]

I badly paraphrased what citation [1] said. I've dropped on an edit. (I have no dog in this race, other than thinking that Python is a pretty important software project. I didn't mean to editorialize.)

[zahlman]

> why would this have violated community standards? Is there some rule about not mentioning "un-persons" or something?

Flags may be cast by anyone, and this will eventually result in automatic hiding - flags on Discourse are weighted according to the "trust level" of those raising them.

My guess is that people perceived this as a passive-aggressive objection to Tim Peters' suspension. It has definitely been permitted up until now to refer to this (although everyone seemed to be avoiding the name on principle), but there seems to be an expectation that people should "read the air" now and stop talking about it - hence posts like https://discuss.python.org/t/moderated-posts-are-no-longer-p... and https://discuss.python.org/t/pr-disaster-surrounding-recent-... .

> and sparking a call for a vote of no confidence in the council which did not succeed

The call was retracted, which is not surprising. The Steering Council isn't the root of the problem, anyway. That would be the Code of Conduct Work Group (https://www.python.org/psf/workgroups/#code-of-conduct-work-...), which is not elected (https://wiki.python.org/psf/ConductWG/Charter#Membership), has membership overlapping other important groups (4 of them are on the PSF Board of Directors - https://www.python.org/psf/board/#id3 - and Brett Cannon and Łukasz Langa are Discourse forum moderators) and enforces the Code of Conduct according to hidden rules that betray the neutrality of that document (https://policies.python.org/python.org/code-of-conduct/Enfor...) counter to the wishes of one of the original drafters of said document (https://discuss.python.org/t/why-i-am-withdrawing-fellowship... ; https://discuss.python.org/t/why-im-leaving-discuss-python-o... etc.).

It's also noteworthy that the Steering Council - consisting of 5 core devs - apparently also now requires a "communications liaison" (https://www.notion.so/46aec24028fd4e8dbdba003097c18b5b?pvs=2...) who gets a glowing write-up in official updates on the forum (such as https://discuss.python.org/t/steering-council-updates-for-ju...) - which are not posted by said liaison. I have no idea why this should be necessary, nor is there anything in PEP 13 (https://peps.python.org/pep-0013/) about this position existing. It seems that this person was selected entirely out-of-process.