Tim Peters returns to the Python community
In the past, suspensions of Python core developers have effectively been permanent because the recipients of the punishment chose not to return. Things have played out quite differently after Tim Peters was suspended for three months back in August; Peters has been posting to the Python discussion forum since his suspension ended in early November and, generally, getting back to work as usual. That does not mean that he—or others in the community—have accepted the way he was treated, but he has largely made his peace with it. The incident is still reverberating through the Python world, however.
On November 1, Peters posted in the thread that announced his suspension, noting that his "ban is history now" and that he did not plan to post further about the ban in that topic; "I'll pick over its bones in my blog instead." He did link to an apology of sorts on his blog, though in another post said that the "mea culpa" does not "apologize for claimed violations I also find baseless".
The violations that he refers to show up in the announcement of his suspension by the steering council (SC); it is a list of ten items specifying "repeated violations of the following behaviors expected by the Code of Conduct". That list is controversial, at best; so far, no real evidence for, or defense of, most or all of those claimed violations has been offered. While Peters said that he had changed his posting style in light of the suspension, that list still clearly sticks in his craw: Instead I've totally changed my posting style, which I agree was taken far too often in unintended ways, which I was oblivious to for reasons explained there. So I too think the ban had some good outcomes. But they could have been achieved far more easily with far less community-damaging drama, and with no broadcasting of shrill, demonizing defamations. Those were raw assertions, with no links to supporting evidence at all. Like it or not, "just trust us" is broken now for a much larger share of the community.
