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Comment by teh64 | Hacker News Reader

Where are you getting these numbers? Looking at the PSFs Report for 2024 [0], 50% of their expenses went to pycon. Would you consider that outreach? I believe conferences are very important as part of the health of a language, and reading the definition of outreach[1], I would not classify the conference as that. The second highest amount of expenses (27.1%) went to (surprise!) "Packaging Work Group/Infrastructure/Other", i.e. pypi, pip etc... "Outreach & Education" was only 2.8% of 12.9% of expenses, i.e. 0.3612%, which is $17846 (actual dollars, not thousands like in the report.)

[0] https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2024/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outreach

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The assertions above are my memory from pre-covid, I’d look at 2019 and before perhaps. Many things changed after that (and council too) but it takes a while to change perception.

In 2019 [0] they only had 2.5 million of total expenses, of which 75% was pycon. So even if everything else was on "outreach" (it was not), that would only be $642,500, which is not "several million a year".

In 2020 [1] 48.1% went to "Packaging Work Group/Infrastructure/Other" (I assume because in person pycon was canceled).

I also checked 2021 [2], which was 32.7% pycon and 31.2% pip etc...

Also 2022 [3], 57.8% pycon, 26.6% Packaging Work Group...

In 2023 [4], 60.5% pycon, and Packaging Work Group expenses decreased to 9.6% because of fastly now provides the bandwidth/hosting: "We are grateful to Fastly for making the online services that the PSF provides possible, so that we can invest time and resources into advancing our infrastructure to better meet community wants and needs."

So your assertion seems to have never been true.

[0] https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2019/

[1] https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2020/

[2] https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2021/

[3] https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2022/

[4] https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2023/

As mentioned covid changed everything, so please stop pulling figures from that once in a lifetime event.

I have looked at 2018-2016, where the expenses are almost completely the main pycon and more local pycons. Also sponserships like "Pallets group, which maintains projects such as Flask and Jinja" (2018). Everything other than the main pycon is less than 1 million dollars combined in expenses.

I feel it is important to look at the facts, not just vibes.

> Also sponserships like "Pallets group ...

Those are "fiscal sponsorships" meaning the PSF holds money for other organizations. The PSF is not funding Pallets (or Boston Python or North Bay Python, etc, etc). They accept money earmarked for those organizations and provide administrative support. Details: https://www.python.org/psf/fiscal-sponsorees/

Thanks for the correction!

A portion of pycon expenses are spent on outreach and teaching during the event. Arguably all of pycon is outreach. There are dedicated grants, aid, support as well. The 2019 PDF breakdown doesn't seem to be available any longer.

During the 2010s, the packaging group was begging for help. "We're only volunteers," a common refrain: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46605018

During the 2020s, funding for packaging was provided by Mozilla and Chan-Zuck, as PSF wasn't doing enough. https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2019/

As we all know, Astral stepped in and solved the problem for them. I moved to their tools as soon as was possible. And not simply because they were fast, but because they work.

For example, here's one that pypa broke for my package a couple of years ago in pip, and never fixed: https://github.com/pypa/packaging/issues/774

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