[Distutils] PSF blog posts regarding membership and other matters

[Nick Coghlan]

Hi folks,

A conversation with Donald today made me realise I should explicitly
pass along links to some recent PSF blog posts regarding PSF
membership and other matters, as they're likely to be relevant to
distutils-sig members that may not be paying attention to the PSF
specific information distribution channels.

The most immediately relevant one is the instructions for registering
as a Contributing Member:
http://pyfound.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/enroll-as-psf-voting-member.html

For folks that aren't already aware, the Python Software Foundation
switched to an open membership model last year, where anyone is free
to register as a Basic Member on python.org, and active contributors
to the Python community are invited to participate more directly in
the operation of the organisation (which, amongst other things, runs
pypi.python.org). Many of the folks here will qualify for
self-certification as PSF Contributing Members if you choose to do so
:)

Historically, that higher level of engagement has consisted primarily
of electing the Board of Directors each year and voting on whether or
not to approve new Sponsor Members, but we're looking to change that
as well, firstly by proposing the adoption a more open strategic
decision making model akin to the PEP process (Let's Make Decisions
Together: http://pyfound.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/personal-opinion-i-think-its-always.html),
and secondly by revamping the old nominated membership system into a
new public recognition program for folks that have made significant
contributions to the Python community(The PSF Fellow Recognition
Program: http://pyfound.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/for-shes-jolly-good-psf-fellow.html).

Generally speaking, in the absence of legal or community Code of
Conduct concerns, the PSF will keep its nose out of distutils-sig's
business, but in this case, I'm issuing an invitation for
distutils-sig members that choose to do so to come participate more.
If there are any other groups you think might benefit from a more
explicit invitation, please feel free to forward this message on.

If you're curious about what the PSF does in general (aside from
hosting pypi.python.org and the various other *.python.org services),
I also suggest checking out some of the other posts on the blog.

Regards,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia