Published October 29, 2025
Over the course of the past year the PSF invested a lot of time and energy in applying for an NSF grant to help secure PyPI. This $1.5M grant
would have given the PSF the resources to create tooling to help prevent supply chain attacks that would have benefited not just the Python
community but the OSS community as a whole because those tools could be applied elsewhere in places like crates.io, and NPM. For an
organization like the PSF $1.5M is a lot of money.
On October 27, 2025 the PSF withdrew the application after it had been approved. They worked hard, dotted all the is and crossed all the ts
and moved the grant to the finish line. And then they pulled back. They pulled back because accepting the grant would require they:
“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.”
In other words, accepting the money would require that they violate their own mission statement:
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.
Since Monday when this went public I have never been so proud to be a member of any organization and community. The PSF for refusing to put money over principle and the community for coming together and helping to make up for some of the money that was lost:
The outpouring of love and support that was seen on Mastodon and Bluesky for the PSF was outstanding. Individuals, members of the community, are coming together to raise funds and are offering to match contributions to help:
In light of the PSF's recent loss of an NSF grant and attendant funding shortfall, I will be matching donations up to $5000. Send me your receipts.
Very happy if you've already donated for similar reasons but the point is to motivate new donations so be sure the timestamp is after this toot 😉.
— Glyph (@glyph.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy) October 28, 2025 at 4:02 PM
The PSF has put principles first and the community has rallied behind them. I only wish we could see this more.