A mess in the Python community

The Python community has been roiled, to a certain extent, by an action taken by the steering council (SC): the three-month suspension of a unnamed—weirdly—Python core developer. Tim Peters is the developer in question, as he has acknowledged, though it could easily be deduced from the SC message. Peters has been involved in the project from its early days and, among many other things, is the author of PEP 20 ("The Zen of Python"). The suspension was due to violations of the project's code of conduct that stem from the discussion around a somewhat controversial set of proposed changes to the bylaws for the Python Software Foundation (PSF) back in mid-June.

The proposed bylaw changes were, apparently, debated on a non-public PSF mailing list (psf-vote) around the same time they were posted to the PSF category of the Python discussion forum. Only one of the three changes sparked much discussion on the forum; it would change the way that PSF fellows can be removed for code-of-conduct violations. PSF fellows are members of the community who have been recognized "for their extraordinary efforts and impact upon Python, the community, and the broader Python ecosystem".

The proposal announcement focused on removing fellows, who are given PSF membership for life, but the actual change would allow removing any PSF member "as a consequence of breaching any written policy of the Foundation, specifically including our Code of Conduct". Instead of requiring a two-thirds majority of PSF members (which includes all of the fellows) to remove a member, the proposed wording would simply require a majority vote of the PSF board of directors to do so. All three of the changes to the bylaws passed easily, as noted in a mid-July announcement, though the controversial change received notably less support than the other two.

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