Candidates for the 2009 PSF Board of Directors

The following people have been nominated as Directors of the Python Software Foundation for the term beginning 27 March 2009. Their self-written summaries follow.

Incumbent Director Stephan Deibel has decided not to run for the Board this year.

Steve Holden

I have been a member of the Foundation since 2003, and joined the Board a year later. As the PSF's current chairman I have worked to simplify the Foundation's bylaws and improve the way the Foundation fulfils its mission statement. I would like to continue this work and ensure that the Foundation is equipped with policies and procedures that will enable it to better serve the whole Python community, and particularly the needs of the developers.

Brett Cannon

I have been a member of the PSF since 2003 and a board member since 2006. I have been the chairman of the infrastructure committee for several years, during which we moved from SourceForge to our own hosting solution. I continue to try to empower the PSF to help make the development of Python easier for existing core developers as well as anyone else attempting to contribute to Python.

Raymond Hettinger

I have been a member of the PSF since 2003 and a board member for one year. I'm an active developer of the Python core. I want to continue to support the PSF goals of promoting the language and safeguarding its IP rights.

James Tauber

I became a member of the PSF and of its board in 2008. I am chairman of the trademarks committee and have been involved with the PSF's involvement in the Google Summer of Code every year and as the admin in 2007 and 2008. I want to continue to protect Python's trademarks and promote Python's usage both commercially and in open source projects.

David Goodger

I have been an enthusiastic Pythonista since 1998, a member of the PSF since 2003, a Director and Secretary since 2006, and PyCon Chair for 2008 & 2009. My motivation is to give back to the Python community, and help it grow.

Tim Peters

While my efforts to get the PSF recognized as a bank holding company (and so qualify for billions of dollars in US TARP aid) haven't yet succeeded, I'm apparently the only director who even thought about it -- let alone type about it. If reelected, I will redouble my efforts to stamp out humor, lighten the mood, vastly increase spending while enormously cutting taxes, and in all other ways meet and exceed everyone's demands -- the more contradictory the better. If not reelected -- well, you don't want to go there. I'm the only director who's been on the Board forever, and without me they couldn't even figure out when a meeting reached quorum. Face it: I'm just plain too big to fail ;-)

Martin v. Löwis

I'd like to continue to work on licensing issues with Python, keeping track of contributor forms better and starting negotiations to simplify the license stack of Python. I'll also continue working on various infrastructure issues.

Andrew Kuchling

As of this writing, there are only 7 nominees for 8 board positions. I think it's unfortunate for a board seat to go unfilled and have therefore nominated myself as a candidate. I've been a PSF director before (from 2005 to 2008) and therefore don't represent new blood for the organization, but think I did a reasonable job during my tenure of helping organize Python, improve python.org, and various other tasks. If some new candidates appear, please consider voting for them instead of me, because the PSF would benefit from new energy and a larger pool of skills, but I am happy to serve in the meantime.

David Mertz

I have been a PSF member for one year, and am on the Trademark Committee. I think most PSF members will be somewhat familiar with the writing I've done on Python over the last decade; even though I've been distracted in the last couple years from doing much of that by other work obligations, I expect to be back into doing more of that again. Unlike most directors, I can claim negligible contribution to core Python, but moderate help with a few familiar 3rd-party Python packages. And I've been a pretty good advocate of Python, I think. Moreover, I'm not even entirely unfamiliar with non-profit board membership... I guess I'm just jonesing for debating narrow procedural motions, so see this an opportunity to fulfill that bureaucratic thrill.

Jeff Rush

I've been a consultant since 1984 and first got involved with Python in 1997 by porting it to OS/2 (with patches into the Python core) and then for a number of years produced RPMs for Python that were picked up by Red Hat. I've worked with Python, Zope and Twisted ever since.

I started the DFW Pythoneers usergroup in 2005, became a member of the PSF in 2006, and co-chaired PyCon in Dallas for 2006 and 2007. I was hired by the PSF to be Python Advocacy Coordinator for two six-month terms in 2006/2007 and have produced a number of screencasts about Python at ShowMeDo. I also coordinated in 2007 the community response to the Forrester Research study on dynamic languages that rated Python highly.

I've presented about Python at the Vancouver Python Workship (2004), PyCon (2006-2009), Texas Regional Python Conference (2007), PyArkansas (2008) and Texas OpenSource Symposium (2008) and numerous DFW Unix and DFW Pythoneer usergroup meetings.

A vote for me is a vote for change. While I don't think the PSF and Python community are doing at all badly, I believe opportunities are being missed. I hope as a director to encourage a less conservative, more ambitious role for the PSF and stimulate community involvement in key areas that need work. I'm against keeping the PSF solely as an IP caretaker organization. ;-)

PythonSoftwareFoundation/BoardCandidates2009 (last edited 2024-01-03 23:24:27 by MatsWichmann)

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