| HN Mirror

Guido is not racist like ESR is, and it would have been a disaster to have somebody as racist and obsessed with dragging the organizations he leads into the pro-racism side of political culture war battles that have absolutely nothing to do with their mission, as ESR has a track record of trying to do: He threw down the gauntlet and attempted to drag OSI into supporting Russ Nelson after his infamous "Blacks are Lazy" blog posting that caused him to resign for the good of OSI, who ESR wanted to spend their resources and reputation fighting his culture war against (dog whistle alert:) "thugs" who don't want to follow a racist leader. That kind of blatant racism and totally non-python-related racist culture warfare bullshit political battles would have been extremely detrimental to the python community, just as his other antics and his and Russel's racist rants were detrimental to the open source community. OSI has enough problems attracting women and minorities that they don't need white male leaders telling black people they're lazy and accusing people who disagree of being "fools and thugs".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Nelson

"Blacks are lazy" -Russ Nelson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Russ_Nelson#Blacks_are_la...

New OSI President Steps Down

https://www.eweek.com/servers/new-osi-president-steps-down/#...

>“The people who knew Russ as a Quaker, a pacifist and a gentleman, and no racist, but nevertheless pressured OSI to do the responsible thing and fire him in order to avoid political damage should be equally ashamed,” Raymond said. “Abetting somebody elses witch hunt is no less disgusting than starting your own.”

>“Personally, I wanted to fight this on principle,” Raymond said. “Russ resigned the presidency rather than get OSI into that fight, and the board quite properly respected his wishes in the matter. That sacrifice makes me angrier at the fools and thugs who pulled him down.”