Comment by bbor

...ok I guess I grant that technically the leader of the board is not the board itself, but that feels a bit pedantic. A prime minister/speaker of the house/etc. isn't the unitary executive of that chamber wielding absolute power, but they are still obviously the leader.

I assume you have more experience than me in corporate governance, but this is such a fundamental truth that I've just gotta stick to my guns. The executives serve at the pleasure of the board. That's what the board is.

  Also, like, do you know anything about Dawn? She’s been serving the Python community waaaay longer than she’s worked for Microsoft. Questioning her ethics based on absolutely nothing is unfounded and, honestly, pretty fucked up.

Well, besides the compliments I paid her above, no I do not. I don't think you're right to be offended at the implication that anyone could be coerced into putting their 6-figure job ahead of the non-profit they serve in the right circumstances, but TBH the worry of unconscious bias is just as real and doesn't require any ethical breaches.

  There’s this pernicious lie that Microsoft is somehow controlling the PSF. It’s based on about as much evidence as there is for Flat Earth, yet here it is again.

As I said above: I don't think there's evidence of any significant conflicts of interest so far, either from Microsoft, Anaconda, or any other firm. That said, I hope I can at least convince you that comparing concerns about corruption to a belief in a trivially-false scientific claim is going too far:

The fact of the matter is that the senior-most member of an important non-profit was/is employed in a lucrative, full-time, relatively open-ended role by a firm whose profits depend directly on the work of that non-profit. There's no accusations in that statement, and thus no room for it to be written off as a conspiracy theory.

In terms of why it matters: wouldn't it at least deserve a raised eyebrow if, say...

- The chair of the WHO was employed by J&J?

- The chair of the ACLU was employed by a political party?

- The chair of Make-A-Wish was employed by a Hollywood agency?