Deb is the Executive Director of the Python Software Foundation and a longtime member of open-source communities. We discuss the work of an executive director, the PSF’s new Developers-in-Residence, recent legislative efforts, and how software nonprofits function day to day.
Carlton Gibson 0:06
Hi, welcome to another episode of Django Chat, a podcast on the Django web framework. I'm Carlton Gibson joined as ever by Will Vincent. Hello Will!
Will Vincent 0:13
Hi, Carlton.
Carlton Gibson 0:14
Hello. Well, today we've got with us, Deb Nicholson, who's the executive director of the PSF. Deb, thank you for coming on joining us.
Deb Nicholson 0:20
Yeah, it's great to be here.
Will Vincent 0:21
Yeah. Thank you for coming on. I, I thought that we had you on already. But that I think that's just because I've met you. I met you at Django con us this year. And you were very helpful talking to, to me and Anna, on the Django Software Foundation Board. Or maybe it was time one of us, you've been very helpful with the Django community. And so it's great to have you on and and talk about your work and how Python and Django interact. Because on our end, sometimes people think that we are just we Django is just a subset of the PSF. I don't know if you, you probably don't get that. But I imagine people assume that the PSF is, like this god like thing that controls everything. It has an infinite budget, when in fact, oh, maybe you could say like, what's the what's the setup of the Python Software Foundation for those who aren't aware?
Deb Nicholson 1:08
So I have yet to find the godlike budget. There is one, it is being hidden from me. But I'll keep looking. We do get, we get a lot of people who probably think we're in charge of other things. I hit this sometimes with non focus, like, I'll get notes, and they'll be like, Hey, can you hook me up with a pie data ticket? And I'm like, No, not because I don't want to, but because it's not our conference. But luckily, I know whose conference it is. So I can be like, oh, you should speak with Leah, she's great. And can talk to you about PI data. Not so much on Django, maybe because the name is a little different, I guess. Like all the num focus projects have like almost all of them have pi in the name. So that probably makes it a little more confusing. But, but I think for Django, like people has a different enough name, maybe from further out, but I've mostly been talking to people inside the community. So I haven't hit too much of that confusion. There might be a couple people out there that think like you're a fiscal sponsor re of ours. I don't know,
Carlton Gibson 2:20
why is that available?
Will Vincent 2:22
Yeah, we'll get into the Fiscal Sponsorship stuff. Yeah, later. Okay,
Carlton Gibson 2:26
so Deb there's lots of talk in the Django community about how we need an executive director, we need someone to do your job, because basically, we're all like this juggling so many balls in the air. And like, we can't do it and not doesn't happen and but what on earth is an executive director? So we booked it
Deb Nicholson 2:47
entirely depends on the size of the organization. So So like many years ago, I was before I came to like open source nonprofits, I was working in a small place with like three people. And we hired someone who saw it, like she was gonna sit around like mad men and dictate letters, and people would bring her fizzy water and stuff. And it was like, oh, there's only three people here. And you're one of them, I don't know, like, I don't know, who you think is going to take a letter. So for a small organization, and before this, I was at the Open Source Initiative as like the General Manager, which is sort of like the executive director, but without the title. And now they have an executive director, but it's, the smaller the org is, the more hats you wear, basically. PSF now has, so we have an events team. We have, like folks that work with the community, like all different parts of the community, and we have infrastructure, and particularly with a focus on security, which is sort of a thing that we have all decided to work on to finally pay attention to an open source. Great. So, so that so there's about 12 of us, so it's a little no one brings me you know, there are a few things that like I you know, I can delegate to other people. So my job like with that size organization means I am paying attention to like the staffing, making sure that you know, kind of the, like places where the different work meets, you know, isn't isn't shifting and stuff in a way that's like confusing, or not fair or too much for somebody to do in a regular healthy work week. So there's that and then also I kind of like take on, everyone has their like stack of things that they do and then if something comes in from left field, like then i i Take a look at it. If it's high profile, I'll take it if it's like something that we should be doing. I kind of figure out where it would go in the organization or how to respond. So I get like all the weird out of band which somebody needs you because otherwise people everywhere everyone is getting out of band stuff. And then you have a whole organization of panic errs that are just like, oh my gosh, should we watch Twitter like, with our teeth gritted like all day, like the whole staff? And it's like, no, like, maybe one person, but not all 12 of us, because that's not very good use of time. Oh, yeah. Oh, hang on x, right. So.
Carlton Gibson 5:33
So in to give you a. So in Django, we have the two Django fellows. So it's one and a half full time roles, basically. But their role is very much like to look after the code side and to do the ticket triage and the ticket progressive view and really do the releases and security thing. But quite often, there'll be these kind of other jobs, which Oh, well, let's ask the fellows, well, that's an it's an they pick it up. But it's not the role. And so that's kind of, and they don't have capacity to take on very much more. So. Right?
Will Vincent 6:06
That's, on the admin side, historically, it's been the president and the treasurer who've taken these up. And actually, I mean, you know, you when you when you spoke with a step, you know, it was just this like, Oh, my God, that's exactly exactly what we need. Because all the things you listed are all the things that I think any tech nonprofit of a certain size, which the DSF is PSF is, needs. And I mean, a big one that the DSF, the current board has been working on is having working groups, because historically, the DSF board members did the work. And if they didn't do it, it didn't get done. Whereas I know the PSF has been a little bit better about basically agreeing on what should be done, and then delegating, and maybe one person is involved. But it's more of a, I believe, overarching role, rather than like, oh, and you're actually going to do it all in your volunteer time.
Deb Nicholson 6:57
Yeah, well, and we've been looking at some of the working groups too, and kind of realizing that most of them need like a staff person or a staff person to kind of like, help them stay even keeled because I mean, volunteer involvement kinda has a little up and down to it. And so having that staff person that sort of, like, makes sure it's like, oh, I set up this men's meeting, even if it's only like two thirds of the committee, like, we're gonna meet and report out on progress. And if somebody stuck or something, or like, you know, people didn't want to, like spend their own personal money to set up some account or whatever. And it should be the org, you know, like, all these weird little things that it's like, like volunteers are either don't want to do or don't know, if they're allowed to do if you have a staff person that is meeting with them occasionally, it's like, oh, no, no, we're allowed to, you know, pay $10 a month for that thing that would make the work better, and stuff like that. So it's, but also keep it make sure like the meeting happens. And so we're sort of looking at how to add that to like, a lot of the working groups and get that support in there.
Carlton Gibson 8:09
The other thing you said there was not one person not taking on too much, because that often happens is that you know, they're the hero, and then they take on another thing, and then another thing, and then nothing then, yeah, eventually they just blow up.
Deb Nicholson 8:21
Yeah, exactly. And so the other thing I think about with nonprofits is, like, I don't know if it's like Tai Chi, where you go where the energy is, right? So like,
Will Vincent 8:32
tai chi, by the way, so you're okay, that's why he's
Carlton Gibson 8:36
got a class just after.
Deb Nicholson 8:41
But so like, if you take a volunteer who's like, Oh, I love the community, I love writing code. And then you're like, cool, can you learn how to do a 990 filing with the IRS? Tax?
Will Vincent 8:54
That's what I did for the DSF. That's actually I still I still got ping. Like and say this, I still got ping for like, finding an old one for this current year is one. So it's when Catherine Yeah,
Deb Nicholson 9:04
that's hard. Because that one is, like you're using more of your like your store volunteer enthusiasm by getting someone to do something they definitely don't want to do and have never done before and are not interested in learning how to do then when you just ask people to do things they like doing and are good at and enjoy. Or maybe you're on their personal growth roadmap, like, oh, I always wanted to learn how to like talk to people more or do more writing and it's like, Oh, awesome. That's great. Almost nobody has like, I've always been curious about filing my 90s on their personal roadmap and well,
Carlton Gibson 9:41
that's your kind of back though.
Will Vincent 9:45
I'm an odd duck because I have an MBA and are the board's assistant Catherine Holmes actually has an accounting degree. But yes, most people most people are like, Yeah, I want to like community and code and it's like, oh, no, be a manager and and by the way, don't Don't mess these things up. Like, I don't know how many, how many skeletons in the closet I want to talk about publicly but you know, it doesn't always happen the way it should. And then you have to there's a whole process for if you miss, you know, not under my watch. But if you miss filing a 990, there's a hole, you know, but yeah,
Deb Nicholson 10:17
yeah. Many years ago, I was on the board of arts nonprofit locally here in Massachusetts. And at some point, like we had the person who was doing the accounting for us, like we just were not grateful enough. And so she was finally one year it was like, there's a bag in my closet. You can come by when I'm not home to pick it up. And
Carlton Gibson 10:40
oh, wow,
Will Vincent 10:41
that was the account.
Deb Nicholson 10:43
Oh, I can't wait to see what's in the bag. Oh, we're really
Will Vincent 10:46
like, seven? Yeah, what's in the bag?
Deb Nicholson 10:48
What's not in the bag? And so, yeah, so like, and that was like someone who was like, I want to make art. And we're like, you get to do the accounting. Yeah. Like that has started before I got there. But it was like, really? Oh, that's so weird. Is it sort of like a performance or? No, it's real, just regular accounting?
Will Vincent 11:10
Yeah. Especially as an organization, you know, as the Django Software Foundation, it's sort of stayed the same. But the PSF has definitely grown. You know, you go from manageable to not manageable with these things. I mean, like, I'll give you one example. I'm sure there's a PSF equivalent where the DSF has had us sitting cash budget, or, you know, reserves of around. Link was around $200,000. And Pete Bumgardner, who was the new took over his treasure for me, though he's now off the board was like, Hey, this is just sitting here. Interest rates are high, why don't we put it in a high yield account and get 5%? So we did. So that's $10,000 a year that the DSF is getting that they weren't before. But it's not, you know, he just happens to know that because he runs a consulting business. And that's kind of why I was like, Pete, I really want you to have this role. So there's so yeah, there's so many things like that, right, that are separate from community and code, but are vital to running the thing keeping it sustainable. And yeah, so it's a it's kind of a miracle that DSF is still as functioning as it is given all these concerns. Yeah.
Deb Nicholson 12:18
The other one I think people are surprised about is that, like, when you talk to sponsors, it's a little bit of a customer service relationship. Yeah. And people are like, what, and, and, you know, I don't like I have done customer service. And so like, ya know, people expect to be thanked a couple more times, and maybe you think is strictly necessary. Because they're not involved in your work. And they're just writing a big check. Like, that's, you know, and so, so that when I've seen, like, smaller projects without staff kind of choke on and they're like, why all the paperwork? Like, they're sending you like, $100,000 check, like, there's gonna be some paperwork?
Will Vincent 13:01
over it. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing is that I mean, the DSF has, I think, suffered from the fact that we're just so small, because a larger, like, let's pick a large company. A, they don't want to bother writing a check, unless it's a certain amount. And B, you know, yeah, they have, there's a whole well established process for asking for grants, maintaining those grants, thanking them for the grants. And, you know, when it's just board members, you know, who are software developers, we definitely dropped the ball on that. So that's, that's a scaling issue. For sure.
Deb Nicholson 13:33
Yeah. Well, and that's again, it's probably something that you want to have staff doing again, like most people don't have like, oh, I would like to have a lot of high stakes meetings about money with strangers. personal fundraising is a skill they want to develop. Right?
Will Vincent 13:50
Right.
Carlton Gibson 13:50
Yeah. Yeah, it is a separate skill that's the thing Yeah, it's not
Deb Nicholson 13:55
I went to public school in the US is the cheap one that you get to go to for free and so that means we just like fundraise all the time. So I grew up like I'm sure the neighbors are like, Oh God, it's that Nicholson girl again. It's me like Oh, today we're selling wrapping paper for the elementary school high today. It's cookies for Girl Scouts. Like tomorrow I'll be back for like with you know, candy bars for the band. Like everything we just like we're constantly like, you're you're giving so much like us you get this chunky candy bar.
Will Vincent 14:29
Yeah, my wife and I are in the PTO here actually, I'm the webmaster. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna resist going down political angle on that one. But yes, it is. It's a whole thing in many places, but maybe I'm Yeah, Carlton. We're just gonna jump all around. Carlton mentioned the fellows. The PSF has some new fellows, right, I believe. You talk about well,
Deb Nicholson 14:50
we call them developers and residents, but it's like probably about the same thing. So So woocash Like, I guess like before I got here, it was Like, Oh, we should eventually have three people doing that. And then the pandemic came in was like, wow, what's going on with their finances? And it's like, well, we're not hiring two more people. That's what's going on for the first year or two. And then we're kind of finally back around again, where it's like, oh, I think we could do so he, he wrote a blog posted a little while ago, and was like, I could really use a second person. And so we had someone respond almost immediately at Bloomberg was like, We would like to hire that second C Python developer person. And that's Peter. And then we also like someone, we got an anonymous donation, like, hey, how much would it cost to just complete the set that we talked about a while ago. And so then we're able to also offer a position to say, hey, both of them have a long history with this the Python community, like lots of people are familiar with their work. So it wasn't like surprise, where are these folks come from? But it was just like, Oh, finally, they can just like full on work for us. And stead of, you know, do a lot of unpaid work. For us, that's a little less directed. So it hasn't changed so much. They both are sort of coordinating with McCosh. And so the work is more directed. But also they're both able to work festival time, which is fantastic. So
Carlton Gibson 16:20
Python is a much bigger thing than Django. But I've always felt that the fellow fellowship, the Django fellowship program was for Django, like the reason why it was able to keep going over the long run. So Django Satine. This, you know, last year is gonna be 19. This year 20. Next year, we're buying a beer in a couple of years time, but there's no way it would have got there through that 10 to 15 year age group without the fellowship program coming on, because you know, it was in trouble. And then the fellowship program started and then all of a sudden, actually, Django is as strong now as it ever has been. And that's just because of the I guess the limits of volunteer effort. Is the Do you know, that is the feeling the same there in Python? Actually, the bourbon residences is about the sustainability secures the sustainability of Python. Yeah, it's
Deb Nicholson 17:04
an it's about doing those things that aren't really anyone's passion project, but like, really need to get done. Like yesterday, we Akash was working on build bots, which he's like, there's no way volunteers would want to do this. It's his, he was just like, yeah, like, gonna be on this all day. I'm like, okay, great. But like, I'm so glad you're doing it. Because there are a lot of things like that into Python. So it's, it's just like, there's also, you know, we have the pet process. And a lot of times the pet comes in, and it's like, whoa, we still have a lot of questions about this one. It seems like like maybe the writer had the like, has the answers, but didn't share them or didn't know that we would want them or how to share them or whatever. And so like Lucas does a lot of work with people who are proposing peps and like, hey, so like, just, uh, you know, like, when, when the Syrian Council looks at this, they're gonna want to know how to interact with this, and this and this. So if you include that your path is going to have a much better chance of being taken seriously and considered on its merits, as opposed to like, Whoa, I don't know what that would do. Yeah,
Carlton Gibson 18:15
I can imagine that helps a lot. Well, I was joke that it's too hard to get a feature into Django, but I watched the odd pets go through, and I think, Wow, it's really hard to get
Deb Nicholson 18:24
it but as you said, it's big. And so everything that everything we change touches, like a zillion so many people. Yeah. And then it's, it's like, even just dealing with the like, you know, people have thoughts about the things that are being changed, you know, we have a whole we have a whole forum for discussing them. And which is good, like I want, you know, I actually wish people would tell us, you know, politely but like, you know, more about, like how they're feeling about different pets, because then we could for see more of the places that it touches. So that one's always a little frustrating when it's like, okay, like, on the on the forum or something, it feels like we talked about this for like a year. And then someone's like, hey, it broke my thing. And it's like, oh, we were we've been talking about, like, how we're going to make this change, like forever. And like, there was like a lengthy I, I guess you didn't get your invite, or I don't know why you're invited, in case anyone's listening to this and be like, how do you get that invite, you're already invited, like, just to tell us about how changes coming down the pike will affect your code.
Carlton Gibson 19:36
But the people who are listening to this podcast or on the forums or on the you know, the Python ideas, that's such a small subset of the user base, that it's always the case that oh, we thought we'd done this right. But it turns out, we broke that or this happened or that happened, and yeah,
Deb Nicholson 19:51
well, or the classic thing with open source, which is like, oh, we have been, like re implementing a bug that you fix like five years. To go internally, because our stuff rests on it, and we just didn't want to mention that because it's like our trade secret or whatever. And then it's like, oh, we changed the we change it. So you can't even just re implement the bug anymore. And then they're like, kind of upset. And I'm like, How are we supposed to know that you've been secretly reimplementing? A bug internally, like, for like five years, like, that's, I? Just, when there's no open, it's and then we can help you. But if you're if you're doing it secret inside and not telling us then like, we can't really account for it.
Carlton Gibson 20:38
Yeah. And then when those things do happen, it's kind of a thankless task and that there was nothing you could have done right? In that case? Yeah.
Will Vincent 20:44
Well, I think I'm not gonna beat the drum too much on gencos. Executive director needs because I've already talked about but I
Carlton Gibson 20:50
think I'm sold. How do we get on?
Will Vincent 20:52
I was gonna say, I think I mean, I've talked, I've talked a lot with Jeff Triplett, for example, who was on the PSF. Board. And I think the easiest and we've had and I'll just say, we've had discussions at these at the most recent Django con Django con us Django, con Europe, small group, so I'll just share it around, how would how would we do it if we were going to have an executive director, and I think the easiest way is to get the Fellows program funded by Bloomberg, pick a place and say, you know, for two, three years, do you want to be you know, sponsor the fellows, because for the DSF, our budget is two thirds or more fellows. So if we got a company that said, yeah, for three years all sponsored the Fellows Program, which is less than a, it's just like the cost of a single developer for a West Coast firm. And then they can get whatever marketing they want. That would give someone in Ohio. Yeah, right, then they would get, then we can we could have an executive director for three years and, you know, see all these things that would happen. So I think that's to the extent there's a magic bullet, I think, but you know, that it requires someone within the DSM community who has the knowledge to go through that process with with these big companies. Right. And, and to the customer service, wouldn't necessarily
Deb Nicholson 22:05
have to be someone from within your community.
Will Vincent 22:08
To be the executive director, personally, no, I think in some ways, it might be better if it's not actually. Yeah.
Deb Nicholson 22:16
So I mean, the first thing I would do if I was to hire an executive director for an organization that has hasn't had one before, is make a list of things that the board is doing and doesn't want to do, or is doing and is often feeling like they're too late, like, oh, no, I really need to be doing this every day. And I can, I only can do it once a week, like so let's have those things and then list off what you think the organization needs to get to the next place where you don't have to worry about let's say, you get like a certain amount of funding. And then, so I'm guessing fundraising is going to be on that list. That person is going to have to be doing a lot of fundraising, and be really good at creating new connections and bringing in money.
Will Vincent 23:02
I mean, there's low hanging fruit everywhere. I mean, one thing we should say, I think that maybe not everyone in Django knows that during COVID, we DSF was actually in a fairly strong position. Because, you know, the PSF is was conference based, largely, right. So no conferences kind of blows up the budget, whereas the DSF, we do have conferences, but they're not big fundraisers. So we were in a, you know, it was less of an issue for us. But I know that was, I guess you came in midway through that, right? That was a little bit existential for the PSF. When you say we have seven figure costs, and then our main fundraiser goes virtual. You know, was it was that right? What was the timing of what it
Deb Nicholson 23:40
did? It did work I came in, right before, like, just a couple of weeks before PyCon and 2022. So I showed up, and no one had met me or knew who I was. And so it was amazing. Because like, like I had all these great conversations. I actually remember this young woman who I sat with at lunch, and she was like, Can you believe it? I've only been doing Python for six months. And the people who run this conference paid for my travel to come here. And I was like, Wow, that's great. Which I was like, I love that. I'm so glad that we're supporting you so early in your journey, but I don't think she knew she was talking to the executive director.
Will Vincent 24:21
Well, isn't that great? Like, when people are just yeah, they give it to you know,
Deb Nicholson 24:25
so I got to it was a that was really interesting. But yeah, I did. I joined during the pandemic and I and like, just like came on, like three weeks before the first conference back in person. Okay.
Will Vincent 24:35
Yeah, cuz we did have I guess, in 2021. We had Eva on on this podcast talking about her journey and coming up as a conference organizer to to where she was. So yeah, that was always something that was like, you know, on the DSF board, we like well, at least, at least our funding isn't all wrapped up in this one thing that COVID blew up, because,
Deb Nicholson 24:54
yeah, that was well and we've been working on like, sort of like pulling, you know, so that we're not Got quite so dependent on the PyCon funding. And like, you know, working on more programmatic sources for income, you know, like all of the like folks that fund people that to work on C Python or to work on security at the PSF. Amazing like, meta and Bloomberg, AWS and open SSF. Like all of those are program funding, not PyCon. Funding. Carlton,
Will Vincent 25:30
if you I have a whole list of questions, so
Carlton Gibson 25:34
I'll go I'll jump in when I've got
Will Vincent 25:37
well, I want to say so. I was in the audience for your talk at Django Con this year, which we'll put a link to which I love that talk. I love, I guess the softer talks. Could you could you could you. Like, briefly describe that? Yeah, because I it was a really, I love I love this kind of talks, I should say, actually, I met Carlton I connected because he gave a similarly non code heavy talk about growing old gracefully as a developer, and I wasn't there in person, but saw it online and reached out to him. And then that started this whole thing. So yeah, so your your talk your talk, what was it
Deb Nicholson 26:14
was about meetups, and it was really celebratory to me. So like my. So I used to be the CO organizer for the Boston Python meetup like many, many years ago, before I ever thought of coming to work here as the executive director. And I love the meetups. I think it's it's so interesting to be able to like kind of have each community customized locally to like what people are interested in learning what people are interested in doing, like what kinds of activities they want to engage in together. And doing that. And then like, what I want to do is kind of strengthen the connection between those sorts of edges or, like, you know, all our little front doors all over the place to the community back up to the main to the PSF. So we do already like fiscally sponsored a couple of the largest meetups including the Boston Python meetup. And we run a big mega Meetup account, which like a lot of the Django meetups and Python meetups are on. So like, we pay one fee, and then we get unlimited meetups. Well, not unlimited, but we haven't hit the limit yet. And then we, you know, are always like, kind of looking at what other ways could we help meetups do their work. And so that's a sort of, on my on my list of things that I want to do is, you know, is are there other resources or things that we can provide besides the Meetup account or for meetups that want to be a fiscal sponsor, ie, you know, a PECS card, which is like a debit card, so they don't have to buy pizza with their own money.
Will Vincent 27:57
So yeah, well, there's, I was meaning to tell you that the Django Boston meetup was an act of one pre COVID. And it's actually getting back together. And I believe I'm going to be speaking at one of the first ones, and actually, they were like, who else should we invite? And I was like, Well, do you know, Deb? So I don't know if they've reached out yet. But if not, I'll coordinate that, because that's another actually, I don't know if they're aware of the meetup thing that maybe they could get under that umbrella. I'll reach out to them. But But yeah, you're completely right. I mean, especially in a city. You know, Boston is on a huge city, but it's big enough. There's the Python one, there's, there was the Django one, there's all these different ones. And there's, yeah, it's like it's the cross pollination to is really great. If you like I for a while I was going to a whole bunch of React ones. And yeah, just to like, see.
Deb Nicholson 28:48
Sorry. Oh, just it's like one of the largest meetups. It's a, like 10,000 people are on that mailing list. Yeah, it's
Will Vincent 28:55
great. I mean, and there's multiple ones, right? Because there's like the come to come together and like get help with your project. There's sometimes people give a talk, they're
Deb Nicholson 29:02
all run under the same umbrella by Ned Batchelder. But it's, yeah, like before, like when I was there, we were doing. We were doing talk nights, hack nights with like, one beginner table and then eventually to beginner tables, because we had so many people coming in as beginners. And then puzzle night, which was like two or three people would go and do the same puzzle and then talk through their solution so that people could see like different ways to attack the same problem. And then like, once or twice, we had like someone, some author, let us know, like, Hey, I'm going to be in town and we're like, alright, well, we'll just have like author meet the author night,
Will Vincent 29:39
like a Python. A Python author. Yeah. Yeah. So
Deb Nicholson 29:43
now I can't remember their names. So I'm sorry. That's okay.
Will Vincent 29:46
There's a few of them. Yeah, it was it
Deb Nicholson 29:47
was like over 10 years ago. So but yeah, we were doing a lot of different things. And then it's that the meetup in Boston continues to evolve. The thing is, is that Boston for We're a smaller city, I mean smaller than New York and Los Angeles I guess, but is a huge Python town because we have so much biotech, like people were working to like to cure cancer or and like, like build solar energy and like all these, like all this different science stuff, because we've got MIT. So like, everybody is in Cambridge, like when I took the job at the PSF. Everyone's like, oh, Python, I use Python. Everyone told me they use Python. Like everyone I met for like a whole year was like, oh, yeah, that's great. I totally use Python for this. And they would tell me what they use Python for.
Will Vincent 30:37
And all the students because Python is, I think the most, it's
Deb Nicholson 30:41
a huge student town too, because like we've so we've got like, not just, I mean, we have MIT, but we also have Harvard and which has computer science program. History from MIT, but it does. And lasts numerous University Boston College. Yeah.
Will Vincent 30:57
Northeastern I mean, Wentworth, there's a whole there's a whole ton of there's
Deb Nicholson 31:00
a ton, and a lot of them are using Python. So it's, it's so for the size of town. We are. It's an extremely big python town. Yeah.
Will Vincent 31:08
You know, thinking out loud. I should host the Django Girls Night for the Django Boston thing because that and I can talk to Ned about that, because there's probably some way to join do it because especially during the school year, I think it depends on the event. You don't always get college grad students, graduate students, but there's so many people are interested in this. Yeah. So
Deb Nicholson 31:33
Oh, yeah, I think that'd be great. And I just someone just told me the other day that they thought the bison pie ladies meetup was maybe getting revived again. Okay. Which is good. Like, Oh, just a lot of meetups took a big hit during the pandemic, it was like, you know, it was tired of it was really meeting in person. But
Carlton Gibson 31:53
there's, as well post post COVID, or not even post COVID. It's not gone anywhere. It's still, it's like the big conferences. It's like, Yeah, you really want to go but also there's, I can only do a smaller local meetup locally, that might be safer, or easier. And it might be more environmentally sustainable. As you're
Deb Nicholson 32:11
in Pittsburgh is going to be masked, we'd made a choice to continue to not pretend that COVID is finished, and especially bringing people from like, you know, 100 different countries around the world, all coming in with the latest strains of whatever they got on the airplane. It's like, oh, maybe, you know, I mean, like, I don't know, if you went to a lot of conferences in the before times, but you know, I would get, like a cold or flu or something every single week, a couple of times a year. Just like oh, I guess that's just my job. I go and I like kind of sample germs from like, 50 different countries, like every other month, and and then see what I brought home. So it's
Will Vincent 32:53
like being a preschool preschool teacher. Well, they had Django, DjangoCon was, um, was masked. And yeah, personally, I think. I think it's a good choice. But I know it's a difficult one for organizers.
Deb Nicholson 33:07
Yeah, people are. It's interesting, because like, so on the one hand, we get these like, oh, my gosh, I'm so glad this is the only conference I'm going to be able to attend this year, like, Thank you, thank you, thank you, you know, and then we get to the other end, which like sometimes goes from like, a pretty sincere like, I do find it really hard to socialize when I can't people see all people's faces. And I'm like, I get that. And we are like looking at like, can there be outside spaces or like, you know, that people can hang out and because they're a little later in the year this year, but then other people it's just like, oh, you SG double use with your face diapers. And I'm like, okay, okay. I know, when I click over to the rest of your profile and x, I'm not going to be sad that you aren't attending.
Will Vincent 33:53
Yeah, yeah, just say thank you. Thank you. Thank you next. Yeah.
Deb Nicholson 33:58
So it's, yeah, it's just it's like, yeah, and I and I get it, it's like I'm looking, we are looking for like ways that we could hold a safer event. So like, this is our first year to Pittsburgh. So we'll be looking at some of the airflow stuff and seeing if, like, maybe you could just have the talk rooms or put like, more airflow into the talk rooms and make it like more of an optional thing, but still have like a good you know, like not, not a crowded telephone booth with five people breathing in each other's mouths kind of situation.
Carlton Gibson 34:35
I've been in these times if you're sat in a tight auditorium, and there's 100 of you in a small room that you've seemed too much for nice to just put a mask on.
Deb Nicholson 34:45
Yeah, yeah. I guess it's harder for the hallway like so that's like one of the other things like I know I've seen other conferences that are like, Oh, you mask in the talk rooms and then in the hallway, which is huge and spacious, although I don't know how huge and spacious are Our hallways will be this year. So sure. Great, and maybe we'll do that next year. So switching
Will Vincent 35:05
gears slightly I did want to ask about. So the PSF has gotten involved in some legal things, specifically the EU cyber resilience act. I wonder if you could speak to that. And why is the PSF getting it?
Deb Nicholson 35:17
I would say more legislative than legal that makes it sound like okay, sorry. Yeah. But, um, yeah, it was just like, I mean, understandably, European legislators were looking at this situation where there was this giant loophole, where if you sell somebody software, you're just like, Oh, if it gets hacked next week, because we didn't do due diligence, like sucks GPU. And it's like, oh, that's like, not a nice feeling for European consumers. And so legislate legislators were interested in doing something about that, I get it. But then they also didn't quite have a grasp on how open source happens and how that gets developed. And so they're like anyone giving the software out, like, should be on the hook for making sure that it's liable for any project that shows up and, and it was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. So that's what I wrote on her website was like, you know, so we provide all the code on our site, or like, both the C Python side and the packaging index hide, free for anyone to use for any purpose, whatever, nobody tells us, when they're downloading it, we don't create a contractual relationship. We just have like, little licenses, like good luck, please don't bother us about it, if you put it in some dumb, and, you know, it's like, okay, cool. So you would now change this, so we would be on the hook for any product any of that code shows up in? And they're like, well, aren't you? You know, I think, I think European legislators saw some of the business models in open session were like, I mean, you're providing a code because like, you're gonna sell support for it, right? Or, like, you're selling the hardware, and then like, the code is free. So you want to a free pass on the code, that's absolutely part of your product. And when like, we actually don't have a product here at all, like, so I wrote, like, you know, are people making money with Python? Absolutely. Is the PSF making money selling Python? Absolutely not. So we are completely the wrong place for this sort of, you know, like for the liability to sit. So that was why I wrote just like, I think some of the some of the larger players and open source that do our product were pretty well represented, because they've, you know, like, 16, lawyers on staff or whatever, and someone who can pay attention to policy, and some, but the community driven projects like Python, we're not at the table. And we aren't really being heard by the, by European legislators, because they were like, it. I mean, I've seen this a bunch of times, like in open source where like, you tell someone like, Oh, we're making a lot of code, which is very valuable thing, and then we're giving it away to anyone at all for free. And they're like, Okay, and then what? And I'm like, No, that's, that's okay, wait. But like, there's got to be coming back on the on the on the side? And I'm like, no, no, we're it's a nonprofit organization that just does this. They're like, Okay, is there like a company next to it, and now there's not a company next to it. So like, so is a little, you know, it took some education and talking with a lot of different legislators about like, yeah, some of those business models you've seen are happening, some of them, but not all open sources getting created there. And in fact, a lot of the things that are offered for free are sitting in like enterprise level stuff, or running, like all kinds of applications that you've heard of, are critically important to the like ecosystem in the way that we, you know, we all understand computing, so. So there was, you know, it took some education.
Carlton Gibson 39:14
Did you get resolved? Is there a? Yeah.
Deb Nicholson 39:18
So what happened with the legislation is that they created another type of entity, so they have like a commercial entity, there's consumers. And then they created a third new kind of entity called an open source steward. So an open source steward, and it's really about the activity of providing code for free without a contractual obligation or financial transaction. So if you're doing that, you're an open source steward. And that's absolutely what Python and pi pi are doing. And that does not incur product liability.
Carlton Gibson 39:55
Yeah, right. Okay.
Deb Nicholson 39:57
So now that said, like, everyone announces using Python is now on the hook for like a certain amount of security and liability. So I think the community is whole is going to want to see more like software, build materials like reproducibility, you know,
Carlton Gibson 40:16
they can contribute back to the security
Deb Nicholson 40:22
I think we will have to take on some facilitation because we can't like, take in 19 different ideas about like how to do security in the package index. So we may try to synthesize folks requests and ideas into like a single strategy and vision. Sure.
Carlton Gibson 40:40
I mean, Django has a security team, and we have a security process. And I think next week, there'll be an A security release. And we've got, you know, we do a good job, but it's all volunteer based. And it would be lovely, if some of the companies that are building products around Django felt, you know, what, we're actually liable for this. And it would be nice to just contribute back so that we could say that our liability was covered. That would be a wonderful statement, we
Deb Nicholson 41:03
hired Seth Larson to do security here. And, and he says, he's been great like writing about, like his work, and he has us registered as a CNA now. And so like, we can receive vulnerability reports better, and, you know, and he's just been modeling what he's doing and writing about it every week. So that it's like any other project could choose any of those strategies and paths that he's taken to. To do what's the CCNA? It is a what is it something or other numbering authority? I forgot?
Carlton Gibson 41:37
CV C? Is it recursive is a CVE numbering authority.
Deb Nicholson 41:41
Yeah, so it's got an acronym inside the acronym. Yeah, but basically, it's like you register and then anyone who's like, Oh, I found a vulnerability like it comes back into you, but you're registered so that it's not, you don't have to, like know a person over here to do it.
Carlton Gibson 41:57
So when there's when Django does a security release, the blog posts will be CVE 2024 19258. And then it will say, denial of service on something or other. And that's that number is a goes into a database of all exploits that are known. And you can search that and it's registered and patches can be attached. This is reference that CVE
Will Vincent 42:21
so you can look up those don't have a CNA or to someone to Jango have a
Carlton Gibson 42:24
routine. Okay, so this is this was a question is Would Is there a benefit to Django setting up CCNA? And maybe the the thing is, we sometimes have people will try and report an issue and people are very good. They go through Django and but curls, for instance, has people registering CVS against curl that are just bogus, totally bogus, and then the curl maintainers need to handle that. So the question is, if Django were to become its own one, could we would be able to say no, because we'd be the only people who had to issue CVE for Django, and no one when we can dispute them if that were to happen, but how much of a pain is that? What I'd really kind of like a hub and spoke to Seth about it was if we could come up to come under the auspices of the pythons, authority CNA there because there's a bit of bureaucracy there, which Django perhaps doesn't have the capacity for, but it would be a known and adjusted thing. And I don't know if that's on pythons roadmap at all, but it's something that has crossed our mind is well, you know, now Python has that authority. Maybe we could be under that umbrella, because it would save us, it'll give us a little bit more confidence in Yeah, in some of the worst cases, I
Deb Nicholson 43:29
would encourage whoever you think would be kind of responsible for implementing that over Django to reach out to Seth and talk with him about it. Okay.
Carlton Gibson 43:38
I mean, yeah, we do, we should do that. But that was literally just a half idea in the background. Yeah, no,
Deb Nicholson 43:43
no, but it's, it's like, that was the point of documenting everything that he's doing is so that other projects could be like, Hey, you wonder what's the deal with that? And it's like, oh, you could actually just, like, see how it worked out for us? And, and instead of doing all that research, or try it yourself and find out like, wow, that was a lot of work, and not so great for us. Like, I don't think that will be the outcome. But yeah,
Carlton Gibson 44:08
yeah, to register a, like an actual CV, it's not too hard. You have to the hardest bit is finding the right webform to do it. Because there's a there's a website, there's all sorts of links, and it's quite hard to find. But once you've found it, it's not too hard to actually invite them would, you know, Python did offer that to others things, they'd have the same form, you just you just you'd have a back channel to a human being, you know, to talk to the only real
Deb Nicholson 44:32
well, and then But then someone has to be on the other end to respond when the things come in. So you're basically putting out this vague like security suggestion box, and if nobody's looking in the box, then there's no point.
Carlton Gibson 44:43
Yeah, exactly. It sort of implies.
Deb Nicholson 44:46
Looking at the reports. Yeah, no,
Carlton Gibson 44:49
exactly. So it's, yeah, anyway, that's just my mind dumping.
Will Vincent 44:54
As we mentioned, pi pi and security. There has been I know, EA and their team have done a lot about out two factor auth, which, from my end, went incredibly well. But I know that was hard to see that there was some negative pushback from people, maybe he weren't really understanding what was why, why the reasons for that? Yeah,
Deb Nicholson 45:14
so and so, Ee and Dustin worked on the first like, you know, initial like kind of test rollout with just the top 100 projects or so. And, and then what we realized is people just needed a lot more notice and a lot more like, Hey, this is why we're doing this. So, so make Fiedler who works on pi pi as our security engineer over there. You know, he probably wrote like, like a dozen blog posts and things like getting ready, getting people ready, like, hey, it's coming. If you have questions, that's why we're doing it. Like the whole thing. He's been really great about communicating. And I think it went a lot better. When we did the wider rollout, just like giving people a lot more notice a lot more time a lot more like why we're doing it. And which makes sense. It's community like, some, you know, and the other thing that we've found out, like, as Mike has been here is that like, there are a few people that have a package on pi pi that maybe forgot they had something over there. Like, which is fine. Like, it's been around for a long, long time. And so and people move on, it's like, you put some, like, you, you gave your thing to the world, and then you moved on. Okay, fine. But we, that's another kind of piece of Mike's work is looking at, like what is on the package index, because there's definitely some stuff that's deprecated. And that, like, you know, like, it'd be fun to look at for educational purposes, but maybe don't put into like a working live modern project or whatever. But, but stuff isn't really labeled that way over there right now. But that's that's like kind of on the roadmap is to make the package index a little bit more, like verbose as far as like what tells people they're downloading and like warns people off a deprecated stuff. I
Will Vincent 46:58
mean, but the traffic, I mean, they've the your team has published blog posts on it, the traffic is insane, like, and, and still, I think still just kind of up into the right. Yeah.
Deb Nicholson 47:12
Same with Python gets downloaded like 300 million times a day. A bunch of those are probably automated, I hope. Good lord. Yeah. But yeah, it's, it's, um, so when I say like, infrastructure, and you mentioned EA, and they do amazing work. Like, just is amazing. But the infrastructure, yeah, it has been like a hockey stick. And it's a huge, it's a huge thing. Even even with like a massive Well, meaning plate users, there's still like, just the like, little questions and things that flicker down, it's like, still a lot. And, you know, and then we also have like, a lot of corporate users that are like, Oh, this is my, my work. And it needs to be like everyone else in my, in my work sphere responds, like within five minutes on chat, you know, and and then the package index is like, look, it's you up a little bit better with what people want.
Will Vincent 48:21
So API slack discord channel coming soon, is that what you're saying?
Deb Nicholson 48:27
I did not promise that. But we are looking to be more responsive, we understand that people are, you know, like, it is part of their their work. And that was part of what you rolled out the organizations which is still coming, it turned out the legal accounting and technical like tying those up in a knot was a little bit more to untie. But, but that's where some of our corporate users would be able to have a little bit more control over their area. So because when we built pipe, yeah, it was just sort of like everyone is the same. Like, we don't care if you're a team of 80 people at some mega company, or like one person that's going to drive by pie pie for two hours on a bunch of Red Bull once, and you're all equal to us. And it's, so that's how the infrastructure is, but that doesn't quite meet the needs of the community today.
Carlton Gibson 49:26
Good, good.
Will Vincent 49:27
So one thing I wanted to ask you actually, is we talked about open source as if kind of it's one phrase for many things. I've often thought of open source as three buckets where you have nonprofits, which is rare. So like Django is now a nonprofit, Python is you have corporate sponsored. Sponsorship is a loaded term, but like so let's say React or Angular. And then you have more solo developer projects. So like Laravel or Vue js, where there's kind of one person in charge who generally also gets their phone Running through that way does that? Does that track or my like, how do you think about open source? Right? Because we toss it around, but it encompasses so many different things. And really, I think so many different business models is really what it comes down to.
Deb Nicholson 50:12
Yeah, I do think there's something different about community driven open source, this has to do a nonprofit like Django or Python, then corporate control, open source were like all of the main contributors work at the same company. It's just a little bit different. I mean, if everyone versus the same company that sort of have the same goal and idea about like, direction, the software and so is that maybe more targeted? Like yeah, sure, but does that make it like less of like a Swiss army knife, which is kind of how Python operates? Yeah, that too. So like, making it so the community can kind of build their own extensions and add their own functionality means that, you know, Python has become the the glue language we hear sometimes. It's also, like I said, it's a great language for people who don't consider themselves programmers, like biologists and, and people working on this face program. They're like, oh, like, I use Python every day. But I'm not a Python programmer. And it's like, okay, well, I'm glad it's easy enough to help you get us to space and help you cure cancer, because those are really important as well. And you can just call yourself whatever you want. That's great work. So yeah, like, what could you do that could like all these academics and scientists use a project that lived inside of a corporate silo? Unless that corporation decided that scientists were their customer base, their main customer base? Probably not. So you know, and then it's like, the other thing with work where, where people's work is always evolving, or, you know, maybe there's just one person doing like, some kind of new thing, like, some sort of Digital Humanities, like specializing on letters from Kings in the 1600s. And it's like, do you think there are enough people for a large mega corporation to write some scripts for those people? I don't, I probably both of them are writing their own scripts to parse the materials from those letters, right? It
Will Vincent 52:27
is, it is wild that I mean, just the example you just gave so many fields now like physics, even even literature, right? Like, you kind of have to be a side Python developer, just to, you know, get through grad school, let alone be a professor, because it is this tool that is used. I mean, I was literally just talking to someone who was saying how he wanted to, he was think about getting a PhD in physics, but he was like, I don't really want to be a programmer. I want to be a physicist and like, can't really do that. Alright, yeah. Maybe if you're a theoretical physicist, but even then, you know, they're using AI to help out
Deb Nicholson 53:03
they're also using Yeah. Yeah, the timeframe where you could just be a guy that dropped stuff off of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and called yourself a physicist is probably passed. Yeah.
Will Vincent 53:17
Corporate open source because I think I was certainly victim of thinking, Oh, it would grass is greener, right. Especially in the nonprofit world. Like it'd be great if there was some corporate overlord who just like paid for everything. But I've heard publicly like the, you know, the React team has said, you know, they had to fight Facebook, Metta just to open source it, like often, it's not some like, thing where, you know, Mark Zuckerberg is like, Yeah, let's open source things. It's like, you know, because that'll help with recruiting, which I would think it would, it's like, no, it's like, the team has to really fight to do it in the first place. And then continually, you know, the needs of the for profit company come first. So many of these corporates sponsored projects are, you know, kind of, in spite of their corporate overlords, actually, at which makes me feel humanized the engineers behind it, right, instead of being like, oh, it'd be nice to get paid Facebook money to do open source. It's like, no, they're, they're, you know, trying really trying and fighting to keep it open source when these big companies, you know, don't really want that, or they don't see that they're not going to prioritize that, I guess, is the thing to say. Yeah.
Deb Nicholson 54:21
And you're always like, I mean, that's the thing is that like a corporation, like is obligated to make money for its shareholders. And so you you can as long as they align, make a better place and power people teach people have a nice event like all these different things, as long as they also serve that goal of making money for your shareholders, the minute those to unravel. All of the other things go out the window, it's going to be making money for shareholders. And that's not like like you said, it's not anything about like the people working inside those companies or the participating In the system's is how that system is set up, like if you if you are going to create a new thing from scratch now and you're like, oh, what I don't want is for us to have to do like ethically gross things or whatever, then setting it up as a for profit company is going to be, and you're eventually going to have to pay that bill. So if you want to, if you want to build software to make the world a better place and empower people, and that's your focus, then you either need to be doing it as a 501 C three charitable organization, you might consider like doing a cooperative, where you're all all of you have signed like a contract saying that you're going to like keep community needs first and not take certain kinds of clients that you find ethically objectionable. Or you can set up a B Corporation. So there's a couple of companies like that in the US two, which is like a social benefit corporation. So you are allowed to sort of split the difference between your ethical goals and your financial goals, without always raising the financial goal to the detriment of any ethical goals that you have added. One
Will Vincent 56:11
last question for me, and then I'll let I know we're coming up on time, which is around we talked a lot about communication, like, you know, what the board does? And despite blog posts, and all these things, people still don't find out. How does, how is the PSF thinking of communication, and I'll give you on the Django side. Like we, for example, don't have an email list of users like we don't track anything. So you know, yeah, there's the people on the board. There's people at conferences, there's a couple 100 people on the forum. But you know, we struggle with reaching the millions of people using it. And so I'm curious if the PSF has found a solution to that,
Deb Nicholson 56:46
I don't know if I would say we would have found the one single solution. It's there are like so many people using Python, I don't know how we would ever get a hold of all of them. But we have a couple of different channels. So like for people that are interested in kind of like how the PSF is doing, we have a newsletter for people that just want to stay up to date on PyCon. There's a mailing list for that, and you can stay up to date on PyCon. There is a forum for like general users, there's one in English and there's one in Spanish, where people can go and ask questions or talk about like things going on in their community, or like announced stuff that they're interested in or thinking about or talking about. There is also like a place where you can go and discuss the technical direction of C Python. And so that is it is another forum that we have that is separate. So like it's it's not one conversation. It's at least six of probably more and then there's there's other stuff like I know Reddit has a Python sub, we're not in charge of it. If you go there, you're probably won't be able to tell. It's a It's definitely like,
Will Vincent 58:02
is there a discord for is there?
Deb Nicholson 58:05
There's Python discord, and then there's Python and Espanol, Discord,
Will Vincent 58:09
are those official though, are those unofficial? No. Well,
Deb Nicholson 58:13
they are. We don't run them. But we do talk with the moderators over there because it is sort of a space that we want to make sure is nice. Yeah. But yeah, so we we made two relationships over there. The discuss forum that is the steering Council, we do run. So that one's right. Yeah, steering Council discussed perhaps and stuff. But with volunteer moderators. So you know, it's like Ron, but with volunteers, so.
Carlton Gibson 58:41
But lots of channels is that this will take Yeah, and
Deb Nicholson 58:44
there's, I mean, people are still using IRC, like, I know. What's it now there's always history and questions from newbies over on IRC. I'm like, that's amazing. I don't know how newbies are finding IRC, but that's great. Like,
Carlton Gibson 58:59
before entropy takes over entirely. The final sort of information in the universe will be an IRC message, just, it's
Will Vincent 59:06
a little bit like, you know, with email addresses, you could tell if someone had like an AOL or Hotmail or Gmail, you could kind of guess they're the decade they were born in, and I feel like preferred communication channel. I mean, I think about this because I'm like, I like email, like, I don't want, you know, I don't want to be on Slack or discord if I don't have to, but, you know, young people are and they're used to it and work and we've had some on the show, talk about who are doing work to help Jango in that area, because they say, Yeah, it feels impersonal to people who are just used to communicating that way. And I totally get it and also, I'm getting old. So, you know, it's good to have stuff to
Deb Nicholson 59:42
talk to people where they are, though. I mean, yeah, yeah, it's, I don't know. We've shifted a bunch of different time. Like when I started at the Free Software Foundation, it was like freenode, IRC, you know, and what we're using, I think, pigeon or jabber or something like inter Office. And then it just keeps changing. And we use Slack at the PSF. Which is like, oh, everyone's like, Oh, it's just IRC with more like emojis and like a GUI. I'm like, Yeah, it kind of is. Okay.
Will Vincent 1:00:15
Yeah, that's expensive.
Deb Nicholson 1:00:19
Yeah. No, no comment.
Will Vincent 1:00:21
I mean, because that's the thing. While we're separate thing on your newsletters, right? That was substack. There's been talk, but like, it's.
Deb Nicholson 1:00:28
We're still on MailChimp for our so
Will Vincent 1:00:31
which is Intuit now? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Carlton Gibson 1:00:39
That's a big black hole. We can't go further than that. Oh, yeah. So is there anything else that we haven't asked you about? You saw? Oh, do you know what
Will Vincent 1:00:52
we can we can ask you like, so we always ask Django guests like what would they you know, magic wand changed about Django? So I guess to you, magic wand for Python? Are there some things you're like, ooh, if I could just change them? I would. And that can be code, community, legislative, whatever.
Deb Nicholson 1:01:11
I don't know. It's like, because pythons like different things for different people. And so. And we largely sort of like, leave each other alone. So like, even if there was something wrong, like, oh, I don't know, if we need that, like someone needs it. So like, I don't think I would change it.
Will Vincent 1:01:32
Well, what about the, you know, where do you see the PSF? In five years? Right?
Deb Nicholson 1:01:36
Oh, okay. So where I see the PSF, in five years, I want us to really kind of fully embrace the mantle of being like everybody's beginner language. And do more to support that. You know, like, if you haven't downloaded Python yet, I don't want it to be because you didn't know. Like, we're gonna come find you. And, and like, you know, make sure that, you know, you could have access to a programming language. But that means, like scaffolding a little bit more of like, the way that we handle newcomers, I mean, we do a really good job with newcomers who like come to us. But I want I want it to be a little bit more self serve. So that if you came to our website, and we're like, oh, maybe I want to start using this Python thing. And and you could get pretty far on your own like, maybe on our website, that's kind of what I'm picturing. Maybe we're, maybe we're teaching Python and elementary school? Like, I don't know, it's I want I want it to just be available to everybody. And if you aren't using Python, it's not because you didn't know it's, it's because you are now using like six other programming languages. After being introduced to programming via Python. That's a great goal. Yeah,
Will Vincent 1:02:57
I do. One thing I don't think it's solved yet is that during COVID, all the kids in high school got Chromebooks. And Chromebooks, it's possible but still difficult to play with Python on the computer itself, you can do it through through the web, but you had to kind of go through a Linux thing. And I imagine there's work being done there. But you know, it's I think, I'm often thinking, Oh, everyone has a MacBook Pro, when, you know, like, a lot of people are on Windows or Linux or these Chromebooks and certainly for elementary school kids, something that weren't you know, so Docker is going to be a problem for for kids to dive into in fourth grade, right? Maybe Maybe Python would be a little bit easier. Once there's smooth Chromebook integration, or you know, and things like that. I'll
Deb Nicholson 1:03:42
let you know. And we started on our Chromebook integration. And remember that you offered to help. Yeah,
Will Vincent 1:03:49
don't don't don't bother Google. I'm happy to do it for free. Yeah.
Deb Nicholson 1:03:57
Well, yeah, let's make you the fellow of. Yeah.
Will Vincent 1:04:03
So if anyone, well, what can people do who are listening who say I want to get involved in the PSF? More than I am? Is there any action items?
Deb Nicholson 1:04:11
Well, we'll we'll have board meeting or board elections coming up in June. You should come hang out with us in Pittsburgh, PyCon. This year, which is in May, and tickets are on sale now. And if you don't want to do either of those things, then go find your local Python meetup and get involved over there. Well, Deb,
Will Vincent 1:04:31
thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time. It's it's all every time I talk with you. I'm like, Yes. Like, there is a you know, happy place that Django and open source can be. And, you know, I think it involves having some paid people who know what they're doing. But
Deb Nicholson 1:04:47
yeah, yeah, don't make accountants. I mean, don't make volunteers be accountants. Well, I
Will Vincent 1:04:53
think every organization feels like they're the only ones dealing with this and it's like no, like, these things are pretty similar. Across nonprofits, and especially tech, nonprofits, and especially open source nonprofits, so there's behind the scenes, you and the PSF. Over the years have been very, very helpful to the DSF. So, thank you for that.
Deb Nicholson 1:05:13
Yeah. I will continue to be pals. Yeah, let me know when you want to hire an executive director. I'll share your
Will Vincent 1:05:19
well, you know, the thing is I'm not you know, we've we were irrelevant when we started this podcast, but Carlton is no longer a fellow and I'm no longer on the board so we can just, you know, yell from the cheap sheets.
Carlton Gibson 1:05:32
We just throw tomatoes from the back that somebody
Will Vincent 1:05:33
should do somebody. Yeah, I think I do think there's something's happening there. And thank you for the offer. I hope that you'll be able to be taken up by it. So thank you, everyone, for listening. We are at Django chat.com. We'll have links to everything in the show notes, and we'll see everyone next time. Bye bye.
Carlton Gibson 1:05:51
Bye.