[tmgehrmann]

Be aware, however, that the inner circle will use you, take your contributions, and, if you develop own opinions, publicly ban and defame you without any possibility of setting any record straight.

pyhton-dev is a corporate shark tank where only personalities and employer matter (good code or ideas are optional).

[pas]

That's a pretty strong claim, (and since most inner circles are hard to get into, I even assume it's not without any basis in reality), yet could you please provide some exhibits to support it?

[0x1242149]

The inner circle emerged after GvR resigned. It largely consists of people who haven't contributed that much to Python3 (sometimes nothing at all in terms of code).

The members occupy different chairs in the PSF, Steering Council and the all-powerful CoC troika. They rotate, sometimes skip one election and then come back.

Their latest achievement is the banning of Tim Peters and others:

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41385546

Tim Peters is just the tip of the iceberg. Many bans are private, intimidation is private.

Steering council members can insult, bully and mock others without any CoC consequences for themselves and keep getting elected. That is how you know that they are in the inner circle.

[pas]

thanks for the details and links!

how they are getting elected? who can vote?

[xcthrow10]

There are about 90 core developers who can vote. At most 30 of those are active and have any clue of what happens on the issue tracker or discuss.python.org.

For the other 60, if someone was friendly to them 30 years ago, they still think he is a awesome chap even if he is now a venomous bureaucrat.

Approval voting is used, and SC members often sail through with just 30 of 90 votes. The pool of candidates is limited due to lack of interest and the perception that only the inner circle will somehow get the required low bar of around 30 votes. Also, people are intimidated since the SC ruins careers and gets away with lying.

The whole thing has the dynamics of a high school party where somewhat popular people dominate the scene and a handful of intelligent people stand in the corner and wonder where the popularity comes from.

It is all a deeply unprofessional setup.

[pas]

Thanks again for the details!

It seems that the active developers are either in "the group", don't care (because they can get their work done), or care and now suffer the consequences.

And it seems the majority strictly doesn't care. Which is strange, but ... Python is old, and has its conservative-ish status quo, so it kind of makes sense (at least in my interpretation) that most eligible voters basically represent Python's "past" and doesn't really want much to do with its "future" (and present, apparently).

Do core devs lose their vote if they don't contribute for some time? Is there some kind of publish-or-perish thing?

[albertzeyer]

That's not at all my experience. I contributed often to CPython by filling many issues and also one PR, and the whole process was very reasonable.

[tsnewman]

The issue is whether the dominant people in a project are still reasonable after your 100th PR!

Being nice to new people is a standard tactic for any divide-and-conquer organization. The politicians get more followers and get free positive comments on the internet that drown out criticism. The politicians don't have to work (some of them literally never did in CPython) and can pose as leaders and managers.