Foundational Knowledge: The Why and How of the Django Software Foundation

I know it's been a long conference. It's been an amazing conference. We're almost done. I'm gonna get onto that. Hold your claps. I'm gonna get to that. We're almost done. If I can just have your attention for, you know, half an hour or so. That would be many thanks. Foundational knowledge, the why and how of the Django Software Foundation. We'll get to that in a moment. I am Chaim Kirby, the Vice President of the Django Software Foundation. Email address, Twitter, GitHub, I'm at ClimeKirby or at CKB, pretty much everywhere. Um so find me wherever you feel like it. Um but first. This is our first in-person major conference in quite literally three years. I think DjangoCon US 2019 started September 22nd.

David, Miguel, the entire team in 2020, you thought you were going to be in person, you pivoted to a virtual conference, which was amazing. You ran it again last year And this year you took a risk along with us and said, we think people might show up. And they did. So thank you for everything you've done over the last three years to your entire team. Stand up if you feel comfortable, everyone. Huge round of applause. And I don't wanna you know it it feels weird to find silver linings in a multi-year pandemic. Um But if we found any silver linings to everybody who's watching us online, that's something new. We've actually made our conferences more accessible, more inclusive, more open.

We've discovered better ways to be together even when we can't be together. So it's wonderful. A bit of a warning. So this talk, the subtitle is The Why's and Hows of the Django Software Foundation And that's accurate, but not complete. Um it is a spotlight on the Django Software Foundation. It's also an appeal. Not for money. That has come up in other times and you know we just had a wonderful talk about money and how to how to get money. Um But contribution Partnership community. Um writing this talk over the last two months and Really two and a half days. Um, took me to a more personal place than I expected. So the warning is

there will be opinions, there will be emotion, and quite likely there will be profanity for emphasis. So hope you're okay with that. Okay. Um engagement. Engagement is an amazing word. I love that word except it's been completely co-opted by Western capitalism. What does it mean now? Eyeballs for money. Yay. It sucks. I love language and I hate when words turn into something horrible. But I am asking you for your engagement. If it's with this talk while I'm talking, great. If not, be on your laptop, your phone, I don't really care. Um but engagement in a longer, deeper Time period with Django with the Django Software Foundation. Why should you engage with me?

Maybe don't. Everybody who speaks up here is fundamentally making an appeal to authority, and as we all know, that's a logical fallacy. Make your own opinion. Be uh what's the word I'm looking for? Be um It doesn't matter. Just make your own opinion. I had written it down, but I guess I lost it at some point. Um But maybe do listen to me. So here are reasons you might choose to. I've been a professional developer for 24 years. Um people have paid me to do this, which is kind of amazing and mind-blowing every single day. That's cool. Um the last eleven years has been exclusively pretty much with Python and Django. Um I have authored several third-party packages. And we've had heard a lot of talks about like

maintainer burnout and and like the the rush of putting things into the open source community and I have a hint and we can talk about this to anyone later. Um open source things that are useful to you but not really useful to anyone else. You get the thrill of open sourcing but not the burden of actually maintaining anything for anybody. It's kind of um I'm an occasional speaker. Usually when what I'm interested in speaking about aligns with what interest it people are interested in hearing about. As anybody who knows me, I have no problem talking into the void. And so even better when people want to listen to me. Um I've been an individual member of the DSF since 2019. This is a very important point. If you don't take anything from this but this, I have made no contributions to Django. I have no pull requests.

I I have no pull requests, I have no comments on the issue tracker, um nothing. I do have talks, I do have open packages, I am a participant in the community. Um And that can be enough. And we'll get into that. And I have been a director of the DSF um for almost two years now, the 2021 and 2022 boards. I was the secretary last year and now I'm the vice president. So, short history of Django and the DSF. Very short history. The first public release of Django was the 21st of July 2005. According to Wikipedia, anybody can uh correct me if they want. Note that date. The 20th anniversary is coming up very soon. If anybody wants to think of something really cool to do for that, I'm all in favor. Let's talk.

The DSF itself was established the 19th of May 2008. The DSF has had four presidents and fourteen boards of directors, and I don't actually know how many directors because there's not really good records of that that I could look up, but quite a few. And we've had two technical boards since step 10. Uh so that's amazing I'm sure there's a longer history of Django in the DSF, if anybody wants to write a book. That sounds great. I think there'd be at least 14 copies sold. So it'd be really worth the effort, right? Yeah Um but what is the DSF? Uh and interestingly I've talked to people this week who were even members of the DSF and said, I'm not really sure what the purpose of the DSF is.

So hopefully this is a really important and and sponsors as well. So hopefully this is a good talk. So We have four pillars of the DSF. They are defined in our founding document, in our bylaws, they are written on the website, slightly differently in different places, but but these are the core. Support the development of Django. Advance the state of the art in web development, protect the intellectual property and the framework's long-term viability, and promote the use of Django among the worldwide web development community. Okay, cool. Those are good. Those are good guiding principles. Let's talk about them. Um support. Support means basically money. Uh we run on about a $200,000 budget, which I don't know if that's a lot more than people expect Or a lot less, but that's pretty much what it is.

Um where does that money go? The the most important place that money goes is to our paid contractors, Carlton, Marius, and Catherine, um, our two fellows and our assistant to the treasurer, who I think we can all agree make this certainly everybody knows Carlton and Maris. Not as many people know Catherine, but as a member of the board, I can say those three people actually make this entire community run. So well done. The three of you, thank we also support in running the elections for the technical board who oversee the direction of Django as a piece of software. Advance. Um I have nothing to say here.

Only because advance really is we run elections for the technical board and the technical board oversees the advancement of Django. to advance the state of the art of web development. We've talked about async. It's an amazing place to expand. I think Carlton put it brilliantly when he was talking about um ASGI versus WISGI. ASGI is still being figured out, not exactly sure what it should look like, what it should be. Um and the technical board, our contributors are moving that forward. Um, so amazing. Protect. The Django Software Foundation are the holders, is the entity uh in ownership of. the Django trademark as well as the copyright for the Django software. We don't have to get too deeply into that. It's interesting to me.

because I am trained as an attorney as well as a computer scientist. We talked about another time, but it'll come up briefly later. But yeah. And finally, promote. I think everybody here promotes Django. You talk about it at work with you know friends who might be interested in software, yeah? Yeah. Django Girls absolutely promotes Django, no question. You know, everybody who who chooses to come to a conference, who chooses to participate, promotes Django. Maybe a contested opinion. Um the DSF does not promote Django. We allow people to. We give some people who do money. We allow the use of the Django trademark to people who promote Django.

But the DSF doesn't We can talk about why. We will talk about why. Um, but that's not a great place to be. I don't feel amazing about that myself. Um Okay. Who is the Django Software Foundation? This one surprises people a lot too. We have, depending on how you count and who's paid or not, forty-five or so corporate sponsors 231 individual members. I want to look at that on the next slide, but remember 231, that's important. We have seven directors, five technical board members, and three contractors. I want to come back to the individual members for a moment. Kojo

spoke about this, Katie spoke about this What does it mean to contribute? Are there contributions other than code? I think I'm an example of that. I'm a member, again, without having made any contributions. And being a member of the DSF is a recognition of that, I think. Ultimately, what does it mean to become a member? Not to become. How do you become a member? Sorry, better. Um for corporations, they say, we want to donate and become a sponsor. And the board looks at that and says, do you have anything at all to do with Django or web development? at all. Um and separately, we've never had to enforce this as far as I'm aware, maybe previous boards did. Um are you morally or ethically corrupt?

Generally no, thank God. Um so corporate membership, pretty easy. Individual memberships It's have you contributed to the furtherance of the Django community? Right? For code, that's pretty easy. Yeah, you've made contributions to the code base. We can see that, we can look at that, we can talk to the technical board. It's simple. For other people It's a little harder. What is a level of contribution? Have you given a talk? Have you come to a lot of Django cons, supported Django Cons? Have you planned one? Have you created a meetup? Right? All these things are options. Um and when we see submissions, not many, you know, one or two a month, uh, for membership, it's Have they risen to this amorphous level of contribution? Do we, the seven board members, know them, which has been particularly difficult over the last two years when nobody's been seeing each other?

And third, we reach out to the existing membership, again, 231 people, not very big, and say, does anybody know this person? Can anyone vouch for this person? Maybe there's a better way. I'd love to know a better way, I'd love to talk about a better way, but that's how it is right now. To put those numbers in perspective. 680 attendees at this conference. Um, I think about five hundred and thirty in person, or at least tickets sold. Uh if we had a tug of war between this conference and the membership of the DSF, except for the few people that would have to show up on both sides. You know, that'd be pretty hard. We'll cut you in half. Um This conference would win hands down, right? There there's basically nobody in the DSF. Um we have Katie spoke about this, I think, yesterday also.

Code you also. Contributors is a rough word, but I'm saying code contributors according to looking it up on GitHub. 2272. It's a number. It's somewhere in there, but that's right. Um we have two thousand nine hundred and eighty-four. Donators who've donated to Django once. Uh 586 who have recurring donations of some amount. Uh according to Uh I forget the name of the website. I have it down at the bottom, but I actually can't read it here. Let's see. Stack share. Thank you. It's easier for you to read than me. Uh there's two thousand five hundred and forty-two companies using Django in their stack. And according to the JetBrains Python survey that then asks how many people are using Django

, a little less than 10,000 developers. If we use the 1% rule. Or if you trust my Fermi estimation. Uh less so on companies, but I'm pretty sure there's probably about a quarter million companies in this world using Django. And I think I'm within an order magnitude, correct? It was about 1. 5 million Django developers. Can you talk about how I got there before? But that's quite a few. So 1. 5 million. 9,000 responded to something. 600 showed up here. 230 actually helped define the direction of the Django Software Foundation. Which brings me to sort of the personal part. Um the possible futures of the DSF. I want to be very, very clear. This is of the DSF, not

of Django as a framework. They are tied in some ways, but Django could live on long and illustrious future without the DSF. Effectively. There's some legal reasons that's that's weird on the side, but let's put those, there's two separate things, talking specifically about the DSF. Um, what are those futures? We could disappear. We have elections coming up pretty soon. The DSF members vote on the board. Several of our directors are choosing not to run again. Hopefully more people run. I think they will. Hopefully we have seven people, but there's a future where nobody decides to run. Right? Um irrelevance. That's almost worse.

You're doing the work, you're putting in the effort, but nobody cares. I'd rather disappear than not matter, frankly. Um or significance. And that's where I want to get, right? I want this to grow. I want this to thrive. I want this to be uh the DSF to be a place that somebody's proud to be a member of, to to know about even. Um and then down at the bottom I put chaos. We don't have to talk about that. We're just gonna leave it at software engineers love finding edge cases, lawyers love finding worse cases, and I'm trained in both. So yeah, chaos. If we don't want to disappear, we have to recognize some truths

that we don't necessarily admit. Um or if we do, it's only to ourselves in the dark. Or last night after a few beers. The purpose and potential of the DSF isn't well known. I think that gets back to the promotion question, but if you know the DSF exists, pretty good. You're paying more very close attention. If you know the purpose of it even better, you have to go to the Django Project website, go way at the bottom, it says Django Software Foundation, follow that link which goes to a page about Django Software Foundation, then you have to follow links, what's a corporate member, what's an individual member, what the hell is this? It's a little, you know, lost, shall we say. Um lots of great ideas

that stay ideas In board meetings, we throw ideas around. People email us ideas. People come up with ideas at this conference. I'm going to list some off that have come up. Agree, don't agree, just things that sound interesting that people have mentioned. Um overhauling the documentation. The documentation's wonderful, but you know, is it modern? Is it well linked? I don't know. So overhauling the documentation A bitter commitment to DEIJ, diversity, equity, inclusion, justice. A long-term oversight body for DjangoCon Europe. We thanked the organizers ten minutes ago for doing an amazing job. DEF NOT exists for a reason in North America. It is a hard job to set this up year after year after year and go to a new group of people.

That would be great to actually have an oversight body that can help handle that every year. Um enhanced experience for corporate members. We have 45 sponsors What do they get? An occasional shout-out on the website, and that's kind of the extent of it. There were sponsors here this week who asked other board members, um, we have sponsorship money. We like sponsoring We don't really know what we get if we sponsor the DSF. Um more fundraising efforts. Money. Buys time. Time buys money. It's a cool thing. But you know, we don't have it. Uh regional outreach. We get a lot of people from a lot of regions. Um, but I think there are some that are both underserved and or underrepresented. We don't have the time or effort.

Um this was a really interesting one. We got an email from somebody who wanted to start a Django club at their university. We're like, yes, do. They said, do you have any support? Do you have any materials? Do you have any framing? We said nope. Um and why is that? Why are all these ideas great ideas, right? Um because we are all volunteers. The board volunteers. Every DSF member, if they give any of their time to do more, they're volunteering. We rely on those who've already given. If we have an idea, I can send an email to the DSF membership mailing list. Jean can, Katie, Katya can, anybody can

who's a member. And say, hey, there's this great idea. Does anybody want to work on it? And they might. But if you've been giving and giving and giving, and so you keep being asked because you're the one who gives, eventually you're going to stop giving. Or just not have the capacity to. And finally, it takes work. I can't speak for the technical board, though I know they do a lot of work. Um I can speak for me and to a lesser degree the other board members. When we put up elections for the board, we put in the note, it takes an hour a month. Alright, cool. We have a one-hour board meeting every month. If that's all you do, you don't give a shit.

You're not gonna get on the board. Um caring takes time, it takes effort, it takes emotional capacity. Uh Quick aside, I have four kids. I haven't slept in, well, a full night at least in 12 years. Um it's exhausting, right? Uh, but it matters. Deeply it matters. You're here because I think you care about Django. Or you're discovering Django or something, but like you put in the effort to come here because of that. Um if you give a shit, if you want it to matter. You have to participate. So I think really embracing these truths, working to fix them, working to recognize them

can help us sort of keep off that idea of disappearance. Maybe irrelevance, but maybe not. But what do we need to do to grow? So we come back to this promote the use of Django among the worldwide web development community. And that's cool. I think that is how we grow. I hesitate to ask this because it potentially shows my age, but it's amazing works of fiction. So who's read their Isaac Asimov knows their three laws of robotics? Okay, a few. Um I'm not gonna list them off. However, in one of his books One of the robots says, there's a zeroth law. There's something that underpins all of this that matters

not more, but you can't have these other laws without it. I'm gonna let you read that while I take a drink of water. How are we supposed to tell the world use Django if we can't even tell the people who know about Django participate in the Django community? I'm going to do an experiment, and I hesitate to do this experiment. It's risky because it might torpedo my big finish. So Please agree with me that if the experiment fails miserably, we're all gonna forget we did the experiment. We'll do uh we'll do a um

uh uh what's it called? Wait, I wrote this down. Yeah, oh yes, a thought experiment instead. But we're going to do the experiment. So please raise your hand and keep it up if you're a member of the DSF. Okay, cool. Keep them up. If you listen to the Django podcast, keep em up, keep them up, keep them up. If you read the Django newsletter. Alright, so keep them up if you were any of those. Let's see. Okay, good. The experiment didn't fail miserably. Um and if we had everybody here who was here all week, maybe it would have been better. So so just quickly look around. Okay , you can put your hands down. The people who had their hands up As a member of the board, those are the people who I can reach.

Those are the people I can communicate with. That I have a channel to communicate with. The rest of you, it's lovely that you're here. I'm so glad you're here Unless you reach out to me, there's literally no way I can ever communicate with any of you again. I don't know who you are. Right? I don't have a channel to reach out to you. There is no outreach. Um and that's in a room of people who paid money, good money to be here and to care about this. Right? So, if you have time, if you have the desire, some of you might not, that's okay. Um, to help the DSF perform its mission. With code, we've talked about that, or in any of the many other ways to contribute, and you can reach out to me, uh please

do. This is my talk. Not to say it's a bother, but I will take the the brunt of the messaging because I hope to hear from every single one of you after this. Yeah, and you can work on that. You can work with the DSF on anything that we've mentioned. So coming back to maintaining and growing our significance. I think we do really well on the first three. We support. We have money. Thank you to the technical board and all the technical contributors. We advance the state of the art. Uh fun for me, probably solely, but we protect the intellectual property. Um but promotion. That's where we fall flat. And it's a virtuous cycle. If we can set it up, it'll be self-fulfilling.

And if we can't, we are going to disappear. Contributing support, again, screw money, your time, your effort to the DSF, even as not a DSF member. to then become a DSF member, to bring in your ideas, your thoughts, to then help us with your time, your efforts to promote it to more people. That would be an amazing thing. I will say as an aside, I didn't put in here. It's an idea that I've been running through the board, through the membership. I'm an advocate for doing like the PSF and creating another membership tier. So we do have that communication channel of like I'm interested in Django. I'm interested in Django Software Foundation. I maybe haven't done enough to be this individual member, but Keep me in mind. Something we could talk about.

That's the future of the DSF. Right? That's a blank canvas. And not next year. Next year's fine. Two years from here Fine. Um five years from now? No. Ten years? Twenty? Who knows? Um it can be pretty much anything we want. If we show up and do it together. So I'm gonna not look at that and look at you. I would sit down, but I think it would screw up the cameras and stuff. Uh I said that this talk started to get personal as I was writing it, and it did. You're my people I found you a decade or so ago. Um I'm here for the long haul. I stepped away earlier this year, sort of. Um For four weeks and that was wrong and I discovered that really quickly.

Uh it's where I'm home. This is a community I want to be a part of. I want us together to grow the DSF, to help it thrive, to make it significant. If that doesn't happen, I'll turn the lights out when the party's over. I'll be the last one here, and I'm okay with that. But I think remember I said Django turns 20 in a couple years. Um it'd be a lot more fun to have cake with you when we're celebrating Django's 50th anniversary in 2055. Yeah.