Simon Willison’s Weblog

The PSF has withdrawn a $1.5 million proposal to US government grant program. The Python Software Foundation was recently "recommended for funding" (NSF terminology) for a $1.5m grant from the US government National Science Foundation to help improve the security of the Python software ecosystem, after an grant application process lead by Seth Larson and Loren Crary.

The PSF's annual budget is less than $6m so this is a meaningful amount of money for the organization!

We were forced to withdraw our application and turn down the funding, thanks to new language that was added to the agreement requiring us to affirm that we "do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws."

Our legal advisors confirmed that this would not just apply to security work covered by the grant - this would apply to all of the PSF's activities.

This was not an option for us. Here's the mission of the PSF:

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.

If we accepted and spent the money despite this term, there was a very real risk that the money could be clawed back later. That represents an existential risk for the foundation since we would have already spent the money!

I was one of the board members who voted to reject this funding - a unanimous but tough decision. I’m proud to serve on a board that can make difficult decisions like this.

If you'd like to sponsor the PSF you can find out more on our site. I'd love to see a few more of the large AI labs show up on our top-tier visionary sponsors list.