this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2025

965 points (98.9% liked)

Opensource

4243 readers

95 users here now

A community for discussion about open source software! Ask questions, share knowledge, share news, or post interesting stuff related to it!

Credits

Icon base by Lorc under CC BY 3.0 with modifications to add a gradient

⠀

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

pylapp@programming.dev

965

Python Foundation rejects $1.5M grant with no-DEI strings (www.theregister.com)

submitted 1 week ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/opensource@programming.dev

125 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Foundation says it won't compromise policy of inclusivity even if that cash would've really helped

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] InnerScientist@lemmy.world 48 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Paying companies to be racist, what a world.

[+] Cruel@programming.dev -40 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

White women are the biggest beneficiaries of DEI. So who's being racist by being against DEI exactly?

The DEI people are against are policies that mandate discriminatory practices, making someone's race/gender a qualification. It's wild that people here actually support discrimination in hiring.

[–] nexguy@lemmy.world 27 points 6 days ago (1 children)

You have it backwards. DEI ensures it's not just the same good ol boy hired as usual (which is what the current good ol boy employer wants)

[–] Cruel@programming.dev -2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

This is where everyone here is being disingenuous, or are just completely ignoring opponents of DEI. When have opponents of DEI called for overlooking meritorious minorities? When have they called for discrimination? Because they must have explicitly done so if DEI combats this.

I know what the stated goals of DEI are, and it sounds good, but I also know how it's often implemented: quantitative goals and affirmative action. These are discriminatory practices.

People routinely admit that white women are the biggest beneficiaries of DEI, calculated from things such as their access to STEM jobs (eg. IBM setting a goal of 50% female engineers), then they go right back to saying that hiring based on gender is actually not DEI. Pure gaslighting.

[–] nexguy@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

All true. The problem is, remove DEI and you hand the reigns directly to the baked-in systemic advantage of white men(tall, attractive with hair specifically). It's like the ocean. DEI is a small seawall trying to make the slightest difference. It's not perfect and takes work but the alternative is a flood of self-affirming bias where you end up with products and services created by them but supposedly for everyone.

[–] DancingBear@midwest.social 10 points 6 days ago

Say you don’t understand dei, without saying you don’t understand dei

[–] RustyOwl@lemmy.world 24 points 6 days ago

I do not use Python for anything, but I donated. Any project, willing to stand up for its morals and against BS rules, is worth supporting.

[–] Batmorous@lemmy.world 15 points 6 days ago

Was going to go into just Rust and GDScript more but you what I am going to go into Python now too. Massive respect to them

[–] 1985MustangCobra@lemmy.ca 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

that pic is me when someone offers me to learn javascript

[–] Kissaki@programming.dev 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Can I interest you in learning Brainfuck?

[–] 1985MustangCobra@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 days ago

ive played with it before

[–] psyc@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago

Sent a donation! For as much as I’ve used python probably should have donated sooner but better late than never

[–] python@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago

I'd do the same

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 days ago

What’s the nodei type if it’s not a string?

[+] meowmeowbeanz@sopuli.xyz -9 points 6 days ago (2 children)

The PSF was smart to walk away - those grant terms were vague legal landmines that could mean anything from "no diversity goals" to "fire your existing minority staff." But watching y'all melt down over meritocracy is peak comedy.

I've worked with brilliant devs from every background. The good ones succeed because they can solve problems and write clean code, not because of their melanin levels. The whole "systemic racism in hiring" cope ignores that maybe different groups have different interests and aptitudes. Engineering talent isn't equally distributed across all demographics just because you wish it was.

The historical guilt trip about wealth gaps doesn't make hiring less qualified people logical. I'm supposed to tank my codebase quality because someone's great-grandfather got screwed? Merit-based hiring optimizes for results. Everything else is expensive virtue signaling that makes products worse while executives pat themselves on the back for being "inclusive."

[–] jasory@programming.dev 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I'm on the fence about this. I think that it's true the most hiring decisions aren't merit-based, nor do they necessarily need to be. Most jobs can be sufficiently done by the average-skilled person, it's only the most skilled positions were you can argue that one person is just simply the best (and sufficiently that it matters). I think DEI practices would be fine in the former case since it's just another biasing metric like nepotism.

As for highly skilled positions, most people in those positions grow up saturated in the culture from a young age, typically from parents in that field themselves. I think there is arguments to be made that DEI practices now can produce a larger skilled pool in the next generation.

The questions are 1. How much does it help the next generation? 2. Is it worth the cost of lower standards now?

[–] meowmeowbeanz@sopuli.xyz -2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

So let me get this straight - we should hire less qualified people TODAY so that maybe their kids will be inspired to enter tech TOMORROW? And somehow this creates a "larger skilled pool"?

The logic is beautiful: "Let's lower standards now so future generations can... have lower standards too?" How exactly does seeing unqualified people get promoted inspire excellence? If anything, it teaches kids that competence is optional.

[–] jasory@programming.dev 2 points 6 days ago

That's just my steelman. You are correct that it would require a readjustment at some point, i.e DEI practices can't exist forever.

"Unqualified people get promoted inspire excellence". I think at the very top, advanced work isn't done to get promotions but rather the work itself. I imagine that people don't take years of schooling and work with the goal of becoming a senior dev. There's something about the work and producing good work that motivated them.

Note that I don't work in tech but rather mathematics research. So our incentives are different, but I think the main ideas hold.

[–] Cruel@programming.dev -2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, but your code will be culturally one-sided! You need diverse coding practices, like three-space indentation!

My favorite was companies like IBM setting a goal for 50% female engineering representation even though barely 20% of the respective college grads were female. Like, they're just blatantly picking from a smaller pool, making it statistically inevitable that they're bypassing more qualified people.

But people here evidently support this sort of gender/race based discrimination. 🤷

[–] meowmeowbeanz@sopuli.xyz 2 points 6 days ago

Cultural bias for indentation styles, lol. Your math checks out though, statistics say women earn about 20-25% of CS/engineering degrees so if companies set a 50% target then they're either:

Hiring less qualified people to hit quotas
Poaching talent from competitors (zero-sum game)
Living in fantasy land

load more comments