Depends what you mean by "modeled". You can probably create a visualization of it, but the data doesn't include any information about the dynamics of the system, how the neurons behave. So, you can't "simulate a brain" to any extent with this data, if that's what you were thinking.
There have been other bans of dubious merit, but this one hit a nerve because in many ways Tim Peters gave the Python core development team its soul.
He had playful and witty style backed by deep technical acumen. His little nudges provided the team with quiet leadership and direction over a quarter century.
One core developer (the mathematician) recently quit over this and said, "he was the best of us".
"Not engaging at all" allows the engaging group to completely take over and expunge their opposition. The Python Software Foundation is an example. They have multiple former directors banned or resigning. They've defunded African Pycons that won't embrace certain ideologies. PSF employees and work group members are being purged of anyone not fully on board with the new ruling party. The discussion forums are censored and long-term contributors are afraid to post.
In general, in democratic organizations it is a failing strategy to not engage in arguments or to boycott elections. It is a recipe for an imbalance that is almost impossible to correct later.
So, I respectfully disagree with your suggestion to not engage at all.
It's not just Africa. There were discussions about withholding community support from China and Pakistan as well. It's really just a question about what part of the mission statement is the most important. Do you promote the Python language in places that don't meet your diversity objectives? That is a reasonable question.
However, one side's failure to engage means that the other viewpoint has won and is now driving everyone else out. Nothing new, just a classic purge of heretics.
Back to my original point: It is bad advice to not engage in the discussions. Unbalanced outcomes end up tearing a community apart.
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"The mission of the Python Software Foundation is to promote, protect, and advance the Python programming language, and to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers."
> We understand that the argument against support for DjangoCon Africa was that the host country, Tanzania, is not a safe place for the LGBTQIA+ community.
That's not as simple as "woke ideology" though. If you don't find the convention, Africa doesn't get a pycon. If you do fund it, you're funding something that excludes queer people.
Without knowing any details, I guess they should have been more eager to fund it. then at least some people would benefit
Yah I'm sure the African pycon was planning to ask every attendee if they are LGBT...
You do know this kind of thing has zero to do with Python? Nobody is having sex at pycon? They can just do what everyone else does, and not make that the most important thing in the world while at the stupid convention.
Like personally I think logging should end, so can I just make this position a requirement that everyone else has to agree with to attend Pycon? It makes no sense, as it isn't related to the topic of the convention. I think that is why it gets labeled as an ideology.
The problem is that this stops being "ideology" when it starts interfering with the operation of Pycon. For example, if other people have to travel to the country the PyCon is in, and they are in any way gay (and yes, there are bound to be gay people in Python's development community), they're risking arrest just to go. Strip away the moralizing and it's still extremely problematic to put an African PyCon in a country with such authoritarian[0] laws.
Going back to Rust for Linux (the actual thing we were talking about), you cannot cleanly separate the "religious" and "technical" sides of the argument. Rust doesn't provide safety advantages when calling into C code unless you inform the type system of what the memory safety requirements of that C code are. Otherwise you have to litter your code with unsafe blocks everywhere to manually call into C, which makes it a lot closer to C code. Safe Rust requires you to know and understand what the C code is doing, or have good documentation related to that code, and keep your bindings up to date when the C code changes. That's both technical and religious - insamuch as Rust demands good docs and some subset of the C people don't want to provide them.
[0] Yes, banning homosexuality is inherently authoritarian. It's literally the first thing any authoritarian does, to check if society's liberal reflexes still work or not.
I don't have the broader context (like the exact situation for LGBTQIA+ people in Tanzania), but...
> Yah I'm sure the African pycon was planning to ask every attendee if they are LGBT...
You're passing judgement on people you don't know, while you remain in a privileged and ignorant position. Many trans/NB/intersex people could be easily identified as such, based on their appearance/voice/etc. Even if the concern was sexuality alone (or other characteristics you could mask/hide), nobody wants to live out their life in a closet - that's also the entire point of a conference: to go there and talk to other people, to feel safe while doing so, to be able to remain yourself.
The problem space is way more nuanced than "just don't have gay sex in public lol".
I don't see how it changes the situation. You can never know the exact life situation of any particular individual. I may be a member of one (or many) marginalised groups. I'm aware I'm ignorant of many issues, including even those that directly concern me.
Still, TinkersW's comment amounts to "don't be gay". That's exactly the kind of thinking that enables this problem in the first place.
Whether you're privileged or not, tolerance could be as simple as just letting people live their lives. Acts of discrimination, hate, aggression - whether mandated by law, by customs, or else - these are all wilful choices, made by people who commit them.
First of all - people are having sex at pycon. People are having sex at every convention. You might not be - but when groups of humans assemble, some of them are going to up, it's what humans do.
Do you think maybe a technical convention should be about the technical stuff? A place where technical things are the only focus and the other stuff doesn't mater - a place where technical merit rules and drives the discussion?
If so, wouldn't it make sense to hold that convention somewhere that allows everyone to display their technical merit rather than in a country that will go as far as to look at visitors social media an potentially jail them over something that has nothing to do with python?
Would you be ok with it if the convention for your technical expertise was held at a convention center owned by a logging company who didn't allow you entry to the building because of your comment here? The convention isn't going to engage in politics, and by not considering such things they've effectively banned you from participation for non-technical reasons. Wouldn't it be better if they held it across the street at the convention center that explicitly supported the right of disgusting ideals like anti-logging (but is otherwise no different)?
It turns out that sometimes defending basic rights of your organization's membership is in fact a requirement for creating a situation where technical merit rules. By not doing so, you participate in a situation where non-technical considerations are part of what tech and what engineers are allowed to make it have a major influence on the technical direction of your thing.
That's besides the point. People are not at a Python convention for sex. Having a convention in a different culture doesn't mean accepting all the moral tenets of that culture.
You're effectively cancelling the entire African and Asian Continents. I'm failing to see in putting barriers to what is the best gateway for economical progress for a lot of people in our time.
Yeah the punishment in Tanzania for homosexuality is only life imprisonment, while only 10% of the population reports being tolerant of someone with a different orientation -one of the lowest in Africa- while the countries largest city tortured gay people in 2019 as part of its persecution of them, no big deal (sarcasm)
At some point we should say they are deeply hostile to the large and well respected portion of the python community who are queer, if they want to exclude them for who they are then we can also decide not to run a pycon there.
> Africa doesn't get a pycon. If you do fund it, you're funding something that excludes queer people.
Defund all pycons from 80% of the world then. Because that's the vast majority of Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and a lot of the rest of the world.
This will just result in forks and fragmentation in the long term, as opposed to having to work with and being more accepting of "queers".
that's how you alienate these people on your own side. at the same time, helping out an oppressing side simply means that their position and ability to oppress grows.
> Because it is. Why would I even care about "queerness" (whatever it actually means) in an open-source project for a sound recorder or video player or game or what have you?
Part of what "queerness" means here is "Could our conference invite a technical speaker who happened to be gay safely? Or would the speaker be in legal danger?"
Many organizations are committed to non-discrimination of various sorts. People's race, religion, or orientation shouldn't prevent them from participating in a conference. And this is often a written organizational policy in the US and Europe.
And if such an organization decides to host a conference in a country where (like Tanzania) being gay might subject some of their members to life imprisonment, some of those people are going to ask, "Hey, don't we have a written, official policy against doing that?"
Now, the complicating factor here is that large parts of Africa criminalize being gay, and obviously the Python community would like to hold some conferences in Africa. But at the same time, they presumably don't want to risk any of their members being subject to life in prison.
If you consider the promotion of human rights and boycott of countries violating them an ideology, then this is an ideology I can get behind. Sure, you might not care about discrimination against queer people because you're not one of them, just like you might not care about racism against people of color because you're white - but just because it doesn't concern you directly doesn't mean discrimination isn't an issue.
The writing in that blog post also posits some questions in a manner that doesn’t seem all that good:
> What counts as “safety”? Which places in the world are truly safe for LGBTQIA+ community? How much of a city, or state, or country needs to be LGBTQIA+ hostile for the whole of it to be declared unworthy of PSF support?
> Homosexuality in Tanzania is a socially taboo topic, and same-sex sexual acts (even in private and consensual) are criminal offences, punishable with life imprisonment.
While I have no idea what counts as “truly safe”, that’s definitely not it! I wouldn’t want any of my friends who happen to be queer to go to a place where they might face life imprisonment for the crime of… existing?
As far as exclusion goes, that’s a pretty clear case of that, a different venue would be better. Some people might say that if a change of venue isn’t possible (for some reason?) then that means that everyone would miss out on the event if it couldn’t happen, at which point people will probably have different opinions about whether taking a stance on inclusion is worth it or not, depending on their views.
Calling it an “ideology” might be unconventional, but maybe not entirely wrong as far as the semantics go (beliefs shared by a group of people) - the same way my “ideology” would be that women also deserve to vote, don’t need to cover their faces with garments if they don’t feel like it etc. The ideology of human rights, I guess.
>> "Not engaging at all" allows the engaging group to completely take over and expunge their opposition.
I agree with this point, though. Except that in any conflict you should choose yourself on which side you are on, sometimes the engaging group might be right.
Can’t comment more on this particular case, just on the linked article and what I read.
This is motte and bailey. Currently you go into your motte and talk about human rights and racism (apparently queer is a race), and people get removed from projects (or jobs) because they didn't get the pronoun of the unicorn right. Oh, and the hundreds of workshops that explain you how to check your privilege. It has usually not much to do with human rights in the western world.
The case with the convention is slightly different, but again one has to ask why they actually defunded it. Because the country they live in is bad? They were not asked to fund Tanzania.
PS.:
> might not care about racism against people of color because you're white
You may of course assume whatever you want, but why do you get so specific instead of just mentioning racism. That does indeed sound racist to me.
> As I said why would I even care about those in this context?
See "South Africa, Apartheid, Boycott" for an idea of why organizations might choose to withhold sponsorship for activities in a country that restricts the rights and liberties of certain subgroups.
The Python people are not going to be the ones to precipitate change in Tanzania. No one organization is going to be the one.
But it's not outside the realm of possibility that a coordinated effort of many organizations might, and you have to start somewhere.
The early SA boycotters were right in their actions, and eventually helped accomplish worthy and historic change. Contrasting their actions with your own choices or inactions can be a lot of pressure on people who want to do the right thing.
Taking the "why would I even care about those in this context?" approach can be pragmatic and reasonable, or it can be enabling and cruel. It depends on your priorities and perspective. Yours may differ from theirs.
I'm responding only to the posts in this thread, I know nothing more broadly about Tanzania or DjangoCon.
> Everyone would have been better off had apartheid stayed.
That's indefensible.
But yes, today's SA is also a mess.
I don't know why you bring up Argentina, but I'm going to go out on a limb and postulate that you have never been to either country.
I have been to both, and have friends in (and from) both.
You know nothing of which you speak, I suspect, but your words sound dangerously close to the talking points of some astonishingly empty people. Could be worth some thought.
Africa's made up of a lot of countries and some of them have kept homosexuality legal, so the plan was presumably to move the conference somewhere else.
Oh no! Some people find it inappropriate to hold a conference where the state apparatus has the legal framing to arrest all the non-cis attendees!
This must mean they are cowards, and waging warfare, and hiding behind ... something? Get a grip, sometimes holding a conference somewhere just doesn't make sense.
At the end of the day you're either excluding people who feel uncomfortable attending due to legal risk, or locals who maybe can't easily travel long distances.
I don't think it's obvious to be honest, but then I freely admit to not understanding queer culture. Qatar hosted the World Cup a few years ago and the sky didn't fall in.
The sky didn't fall for you, but some people genuinely did not go to the World Cup as they were fearful of legal repercussions. Ultimately nothing of note happened in terms of arrest, but that's mostly due to Qatar being shamed by other countries into not arresting anyone for morals during the World Cup.
Can a tiny programming language convention get a State to informally stop enforcing its own laws?
Even the most well-meaning and charitable critiques are not embraced by moral universalists—they don't believe they can possibly be wrong about anything.
Just ask them if they've been wrong about something of substance recently that negatively affected others—they rather walk away or block you than even entertain the possibility of being wrong.
The moral universalists don't see defunding poor Africans as deranged. In their minds they believe this is good. The reason there is so much derision and contempt online and in real life is because these people are fundamentally impervious to reason.
It's not a misunderstanding—they literally elevate race and sexual orientation above all else. They genuinely view excluding the out-group as positive, and for them to imagine a perspective in which they are mistaken is inconceivable.
Our only saving grace is this pathological ideology is hostile to intelligence and meritocracy.
I laugh at your description of my point of view as hostile to intelligence. I see the simplicity which you fail to grasp.
On one hand, African devs should be supported. On the other hand, holding a conference in a specific country means some participants will risk arrest by an hostile government. Simply not going to that country, and going to another neighbouring African nation means everyone can feel safe. Problem easily solved, but in your worldview listening to gay people is hostile to intelligence. How ... ancient.
By refusing to hold the conference in Tanzania, the organizers aren't just sending a message to the government; they're effectively punishing the entire Tanzanian populace. The vast majority of citizens, who neither crafted these laws nor have the power to change them, are deprived of the opportunities such an event would bring—educational advancement, economic benefits, cultural exchange. It's a form of collective punishment that mirrors the very oppression it claims to oppose.
Your approach operates on a simplistic moral binary, failing to recognize the complex socio-political fabric of nations. It assumes that by isolating a country, one can coerce it into moral compliance. History tells us otherwise. Isolation often entrenches regimes, hardens attitudes, and exacerbates suffering among the general population.
Moreover, there's an ironic arrogance in this stance. It presumes that external actors have the moral authority—and the practical ability—to enforce change through deprivation. It's a performative gesture that achieves little beyond self-congratulatory validation for those making the decision. Meanwhile, the marginalized groups within Tanzania receive no tangible benefit; in fact, they may find themselves in an even more precarious position due to reduced international engagement.
Furthermore, it's striking how obsessively fixated some are on this minority group, to the point where any notion of compromise becomes inconceivable. Your reactionary stance is so inflexible that you can't even entertain the idea that perhaps speakers outside this minority could present at the conference, thus navigating around any legal complications. Unless, of course, you're implicitly admitting that the majority of potential contributors belong to this minority. If that's the case, fine—but let's be transparent about it.
This one-dimensional focus reveals a deeper issue: an inability to see beyond a singular narrative, even when it results in counterproductive outcomes. By refusing to adapt, you not only hinder the event but also undermine opportunities for the broader community. It's a self-defeating approach that sacrifices practical progress on the altar of ideological purity. If the aim is truly to foster growth, education, and positive change, then rigid adherence to such a narrow perspective serves no one—not the minority in question, nor the wider population yearning for advancement.
I think the original comment probably had an implicit [ignore isolated actors] as part of the context. Any organisation has to be wary of alternative mission statements overriding their actual mission statement and a failure to engage when that happens generally presages trouble.
Indeed, and additionally, I was specifically talking about technical issues, not organizational issues. "Should we adopt this tech or not?" kind of stuff. Examples I'm sure we can all relate to: desktop environments, systemd, pulseaudio, programming languages, github/lab vs mailing lists. Lots of religious debates come up to separate out from legitimate technical concerns.
Organizational issues are a whole other ballgame. I can see how my original comment was not specific enough about this.
Tanzania has life imprisonment for homosexuality, surveys show it has 10% of its population tolerate queer people, and has been committing human rights abuses against the queer community for years as part of its authoritarianism. I think its fair to not run a pycon in a country that is explicitly extremely hostile and dangerous for a wide and respected portion of the python community.
It doesn't really matter. It could have been any contentious difference in strategic direction. The outcome would have been the same. People need to engage or face inevitable takeover and exclusion.
"Certain idealogies" like communism or what? It's hard to understand what's at stake here if you're using euphemism like this. It sounds like there is conflict over a specific action or policy, what is it?
Sorry for using vague terminology. I don't personally keep up with PSF dramas. My point was about communities in general, not just the PSF in particular.
To be fair, the dominant group itself also uses vague terminology. The PSF director's linked-in account says, "I'm motivated by the intersection of technology and social justice." Their social media accounts are more specific though: https://x.com/baconandcoconut?lang=en
It's hard to look at a situation from the outside, and I genuinely have no clue about the real situation in the Python community. All I know from those blog posts is that this guy has been bitterly claiming that he is going to leave the Python community for six years straight.
If he doesn't like it so much, he should stop writing about it. I'm sorry, but I went into those blog posts with an open mind, and all I found was a long list of personal complaints with relatively few details about the actual situation.
It was not a straw man. I've seen it specified in contracts. I've seen audit teams sent in to verify an SDLC (system development life cycle). Arthur Andersen (now Andersen consulting) had it formalized in their "Method 1" system development approach.
Any semblance of agile was met with hostility. You were labeled a "cowboy programmer" or "hobbyist programmer" if you dared start with code instead of specification and approved plan.
Also, it is easy to forget those "rules" weren't wrong. People were coding in non-agile languages. Version control tools had strict checkout and locking. Project communication was in the form of rows of three ring binders -- everytime you added or changed a function, you marked up the existing doc page and a secretary retyped it with carbon paper (for a subject book, title book, and subsystem book).
Changed to requirements were very expensive, so the whole system was designed to get full buy in a once. Consider that even now in this "age of enlightenment", we take a waterfall approach in nonsoftware projects simply because changes are expensive. If you're having a custom home built, you need to make a lot of decisions early. You're charged heavily if you want to change the spec during construction.
Today a famous and well respected core developer was suspended. Presumably, that is why this this old article made the front page of Hacker News right afterwards.
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