What is the Python Software Foundation (PSF) doing with my money?

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that I'll be giving up to 5% of my annual salary to Free and Open Source Software, and one of the projects that I'm donating to is the Python Software Foundation (PSF). I joined PSF at the Supportimg Member - Sliding Scale tier at 25 USD membership dues + additional contribution of 25 USD per Annum - roughly 5000 INR. This was prompted by the recent decision by the PSF to pause the grants program. Like my decision to become a member of the the TeX Users Group (TUG), the right thing to do now is to check what the PSF doing with my money or what they've done with funds/donations in the past.

The PSF announced the 2024 annual report in June of this year - checkout the annual report itself at psf annual-report/2024. The PSF gets, and spends, a lot more money than TUG. For instance

  • Annual revenue was a little less than 4.3 Million USD in 2024 and annual expenditure was a little more than 5.7 Million USD
  • The PSF awarded 297K USD in travel grants to 552 grant recipients (Slide 17 of the report). For context, the entire TUG annual budget is 100K USD
  • The PSF acts as as fiscal sponsor for a lot of Python communities, but also the incredibly influential Pallets and Twisted Python packages/projects, paying out a total of 423,000 USD in 2023 to fiscal sponsorees
  • Close to fifty corporate sponsors support the PSF throughout the year, but I don't think any of them are Indian-origin. FYI, the Associate tier is the cheapest at 1750 USD per annum, cheaper than what most companies spend on a single conference
  • Close to 50% of the total expenditure for 2024 is the annual PyCon US conference
  • Two interesting things that caught my eye - 35,000 USD for Code of Conduct and 15,000 USD for Community Awards & Expenses. I'm not sure what either of those line items entail
  • Another interesting thing is the fact that more than 70% of Grant disbursement is for Python Conference Grants and Travel Grants but only 5% is for Python Sprints. While Conference and travel grants are helpful, I imagined a larger Python Sprints grants budget could lead to more active developers in the Python ecosystem

But here's the thing that shocked me - the number isn't mentioned on the Annual Report but - it looks like there are a little less than 1200 paying members of the PSF. See Form 990 for the year 2023, or the 2023 election results post. Again, by comparison, TUG has around a 1000 paying members. "Contributions, membership dues, and grants" total more than 1 Million USD according to the Annual Report (Slide 24). Even if we assume that a 1000 paying members are standard Supporting Members at $99 per year, that's only 100,000 USD per annum in membership dues. Also, what's the geographic distribution of these members?

Python was the #1 language on GitHub in 2024 and Python tops the TIOBE community index, an indicator of the popularity of the language. Clearly, the Python Software Foundation is doing something right. So I am beyond bewildered at the current membership numbers.

Let's do some quick back of the envelope math. PyCon US 2024 had 198 speakers. There are a lot of other annual Python conferences around the world, but let's assume that the total number of annual speakers at Python conferences around the world is 1000. How many of them do you think are members? All of them? Half of them? At least a tenth of them? Let's go a little "deeper" - tens of thousands of speakers talk about Python at local Python User Groups all around the world. How many of them do you think are members of the PSF? Could we convince 10% (1000) of the speakers at local Python User Groups to signup and pay dues for a membership?

And here's what's puzzling me. I've never attended PyCon US so I don't know if the conference organizers do a membership drive at the event but I've attended a few other Python events (conferences and local Python User Group events) in India and I don't remember seeing the organizers do a membership drive. I presume that this is because the organizers are oblivious to the membership numbers.

You might argue that I'm looking at this the wrong way - that organizations that profit from Python should donate their fair share to the Python Software Foundation. And I agree with you, that's what I originally intended to write. I was looking through the PyCon India conference sponsors since 2009 and realized that an abysmally small number of them are PSF sponsors, and none of them are Indian-origin organizations (Please correct me if I missed something obvious from the list).

But the PSF membership puts the sponsors into perspective. If someone isn't a supporting member of the PSF, do you expect them to lobby their organization to support the PSF financially? And let's be clear, individuals also profited from the Python programming language and community. According to the 2024 Stack Overflow developer survey, the median reported salary for a Python developer is upwards of 65,000 USD per annum. According to the Jetbrains State of Developer Ecosystem Report, Python developers are among those that command the highest paychecks. If we're not willing to contribute back as individuals, how will we ever create a culture where the organizations are willing to contribute?

I'd like to end with two small, but hopefully impactful, notes

  • Like I mentioned earlier, 70% of the Python grant disbursement goes towards Python conference grants and Travel grants. I haven't checked the requirements of the grants but I would like to request that every conference supported by the PSF have a PSF booth, where a volunteer can communicate about the PSF with interested conference attendees, and maybe signup a few members. And every travel grant recipient should acknowledge the grant and highlight the PSF membership in their talk/session
  • Why do PyCon US sponsors get special treatment when it comes to the PSF? A PSF Associate Sponsor gets acknowledged on the Python.org website as a PSF supporter but I can count tens of PyCon India sponsors who supported at or above an  Associate Sponsor-equivalent tier. Zeomega has sponsored PyCon India 13 times, including the inaugural edition in 2009. Why not also recognize them on the Python.org website as a PSF supporter? This is non-trivial because of the communication overhead between the PSF staff/board and the Python conference organizers, but I strongly believe it's worth the effort. The Silver membership tier for the Linux Foundation boasts more than a 1000 members, which immediately impresses upon a layman the strength of the community. I imagine that bringing to light the Python conference sponsors from across the world will do the same for the Python ecosystem

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