Chris McDonough

Good to see that LWN is writing about it, since they wrote about the ban in the first place.

> In the past, suspensions of Python core developers have effectively been permanent because the recipients of the punishment chose not to return.

A very good point. Although I don't think Peters is the sort to make that choice (even if he's stood up for others who have).

>One of those other threads was started on November 21 by Marc-André Lemburg to discuss moving enforcement of the CoC away from the SC.

I think it's a bad idea, for reasons that Chris McDonough has elucidated at least as well as I could hope to (https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/ban-transparency-from-tim-peters). Mr. Lemburg is one of the "old guard", so I'm a bit disappointed.

The SC should be empowered to enforce CoC as regards core development as it sees fit - and Discourse forum moderators as they see fit, and PyCon organizers as they see fit, etc. - each as regards their respective spaces and nowhere else. There should not be a separate "work group" for this, especially not an unelected, unaccountable one which is for some reason taken seriously by everyone else - even when they make absurd allegations such as the ones against Mr. Peters.

> Warsaw revealed that he had abstained from the vote on the suspension, in part because he did not feel he could be unbiased; similarly, CoC WG members Brett Cannon and Łukasz Langa abstained from the vote to recommend the suspension to the SC.

Credit where it's…

I'm an outsider who only knows Guido van Rossum by way of interviews his writing.

Assuming your quote is what the original text said (I don't disbelieve you-- but nobody can see it to confirm) why would this have violated community standards? Is there some rule about not mentioning "un-persons" or something?

It's very confusing.

Edit: Answering my own question. There appears to be a kerfuffle afoot. Apparently the Steering Council has suspended a core developer for 3 months[0] but isn't naming the suspended developer or citing specific reasons why (per [1] and sparking a call for a vote of no confidence in the council which did not succeed).

Apparently even mentioning the suspended person (without naming them) is enough for even Guido van Rossum to be censored. Wow.

Edit 2: The suspended developer is Tim Peters[3].

Edit 3: Altered paragraph "Edit:" from "...or the reason why[1] (" to "...or citing specific reasons why (per [1]".

Edit 4: Added "which did not succeed" after "...vote of no confidence in the council".

[0] https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-core-developer/60250

[1] https://discuss.python.org/t/calling-for-a-vote-of-no-confidence/61557

[3] https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestration-of-tim

Tim is very short on the topic of actual accusations but someone else does a good job discussing them one by one:

https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestration-of-tim

And this one struck me:

> > "Dismissing unacceptable behavior of others as a “neurodivergent” trait"

> In the context of the bylayws change discussions, Tim detailed his relationship with a prickly core developer who was maniacal about a particular bit of stdlib code, whom he considered neurodivergent, and lamented that that person had been removed, because their code was top-notch. He then started a thread questioning if Python was accepting of such people. The accusation is accurate, except in the characterization of "unacceptable" perhaps. The characterizations certainly were not unacceptable to me.

Apart from my personal feelings about this, which are obviously 100% aligned with Toms, I find this particular case a bit bizarre. Where I work for, we have neurodiversity training, celebrate the neurodiversity day, and in general respect the topic a lot, making it clear that neurodiverse people actually belong here. So the actions of these folks seem at odd with something I consider the modern norm, that's really weird.

This is an interesting story but this article looks really poorly written/biased. It didn't until the QA at the end clarify that this was a 3 month suspension. It instead started with "bans" in the title, walks back to "suspended" in the first line, and then didn't clarify that point until effectively the appendix to "3 month suspension".

Little tricks like this make me lose faith in the objectivity of an article. Then there's the cherry picking of reasons, general tone, which makes this feel more like rage bait than an article meant to inform.

I would love to read an unbiased article on this.

Edit: here's the source suspension announcement, which has lots of comments: https://discuss.python.org/t/three-month-suspension-for-a-core-developer/60250

And a less ragebait-y albeit much longer critical write-up from another developer: https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestration-of-tim

Just over a month ago there was a flashpoint in community tensions, as some expressed their concerns over the project's governance. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40107370

As a quick summary, they were concerned about sponsorship from military tech, about community moderation not doing enough to keep trolls out, and annoyed by Eelco Dolstra.

In response to this, some discussions about project governance were had. It seems like it was quite a disorganised mess. https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/report-on-nixos-governance-discussions

I had never heard of the Tim Peters incident, but I just googled it. (It's not on his Wikipedia page.)

I found this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1ep4dbt/the_shameful_defenestration_of_tim/

Which points to this:

https://chrismcdonough.substack.com/p/the-shameful-defenestration-of-tim

This characterizes it as completely unfair, and the /r/python community seems to agree.

Is there a rebuttal from the other side?