PyPA

The Python Packaging Authority (PyPA) was created to take over the maintenance of pip and virtualenv from Ian Bicking, led by Brian Rosner, Carl Meyer and Jannis Leidel. Over the years, additional projects got added to the PyPA and the tooling maintained by the PyPA became the baseline tooling for Python packaging, with additional package ecosystems using and building on top of the tools and interoperability standards maintained by the PyPA.

PEP 609 formalized the PyPA’s authority over the existing packaging tools, the interoperability standards and their operation as a group of independent projects under the same umbrella that aim to be interoperable. It also stated that PyPA should be expected to provide opinions, insight and experience when ecosystem-wide changes are being proposed. In particular, the work to support existing projects and maintain a user guide has been excellent.

At the time of writing, PyPA does not have a community elected body and individuals within the group meet ad hoc, rather than on a regular cadence. The PyPA itself is defined by a group of projects rather than as a group of individuals, with no direct oversight over its individuals.

Packaging-WG

The PSF’s Packaging Workgroup was created to support the larger efforts of improving and maintaining the packaging ecosystem in Python through fundraising and disbursement of raised funds. It was expected to largely focus on efforts such as Python Package Index (PyPI), pip, packaging.python.org, Setuptools, and cross-project efforts.

The group made very good progress here in the past, but the scope and scale of supporting Python’s packaging ecosystem has grown considerably in the last few years. There is both more work to be done and more stakeholders than ever before. The Packaging Workgroup is also not a community elected body and does not have a regular mechanism for changing, adding or removing members.

Interoperability Standards

The PyPA is responsible for creating and maintaining the interoperability standards for Python packaging tools. The decision making for updating these standards involves a standing delegation from the Python Steering Council to specific individuals based on specific topics, and these individuals have the ability to further delegate the decision making on the changes to other individuals.

We know that this process is not sustainable and there has been a desire expressed by many to have a designated body to make these decisions (including the individuals with the standing delegations).

Python Steering Council

While there is overlap between the PyPA, Packaging-WG, and the Python core team, the Steering Council is not well-placed to make decisions over Python packaging matters directly. Packaging only tangentially intersects with Python language evolution, packaging requires specialised expertise and deep domain knowledge (much like typing or the C API), and there is a different cohort of potential electors for a Packaging Council than the Steering Council.

Expectations

An elected Packaging Council would have authority over the interoperability standards, would guide the packaging tooling provided with CPython, and have the mandate to coordinate Python packaging efforts. This would provide a better, more consistent experience to packagers, package consumers, tool developers, PyPI, and other index maintainers. With greater transparency and clearer goals via an elected Packaging Council, the PSF will also be able to offer more tactical work, longer term strategic vision, and fundraising support to all parts of this ecosystem.

Some expectations around the formation of a Packaging Council are that they will:

• Work with PSF staff and the newly formed User Success Workgroup toward improving the user experience around packaging.
• Pronounce on and promote APIs, protocols, interfaces, and other interoperable standards relevant to Python packaging.
• Facilitate a more stable packaging ecosystem that is more responsive to community input.
• Increase transparency and clearly share the goals for the packaging ecosystem.
• Facilitate tactical and fundraising support from the PSF, to increase capacity and funding available to packaging tools.

Packaging Council

The Packaging Council will be composed of five individuals.

Responsibilities

Packaging Council Electors participate in formal votes to elect the Packaging Council.

The eligibility of Packaging Council Electors is equivalent to the Article IV, section 4.2 voting membership defined in the PSF Bylaws. Should those bylaws change in the future, the eligibility of Packaging Council Electors will similarly change to match. As with PSF voting membership, Packaging Council Electors must affirm their intention to vote in Packaging Council elections every year.

Changing the governance

Changes proposed to this governance model must be approved by the Python Steering Council.

Annual elections for all Council members

An annual term for Council members is the approach taken for the Python Steering Council’s elections. This PEP uses a cohort-based model, derived from the PSF Board’s elections which enables continuity of members across a changing Council.

There is a trade-off between continuity of the Council and full reshuffles. This PEP takes the position that continuity will be more valuable for the Python Packaging domain, especially combined with the vote of no confidence, automatic removal of inactive voters, and regular elections.

Term limits for council members

While this is viewed as valuable for boards in general, this was rejected because of the size of the pool of interested and qualified people who might serve.

Elector eligibility

Previous iterations of this PEP’s draft proposed different membership rules for identifying the Packaging Council Electors. After extensive discussion among stakeholders, and after seeking the widest possible feedback, the PEP authors agreed that aligning Packaging Council Electors with PSF Board voting membership was both the most workable arrangement and the most equitable approach to include all parts of the Python packaging community.

PSF membership is used here because it is open to the broadest possible Python community. In particular, most people doing Python packaging work do such work in public, including contributing to PyPA or non-PyPA projects, and are likely to be eligible for PSF “Contributing Membership” based on that work without paying any membership fee.

Approval voting in the election

An earlier non-public draft of this PEP used an approval voting process, which aligned with what PEP 13 stated at the time of writing. The Python core team has changed their governance to use Bloc STAR and this PEP was updated to align with that for the same reasons as the core team’s move to Bloc STAR: it better captures voter intention in the results. It is also expected that the same election machinery can be used for both elections.

Disallow multiple people from the same organization on the council

This PEP currently mirrors the Python Steering Council’s limit, that at most two individuals related to a single organization can be on the council.

Limiting it to one is workable; although it hasn’t come up in the Steering Council, people do move around, and we wouldn’t want good candidates to either make employment decisions based on Packaging Council membership, or have to resign based on an employment change. Limiting it to a maximum of two, plus votes of no confidence is likely sufficient to avoid any undue employer influence.

Establishing specific processes for Packaging Council and PyPA relationship

As noted in the abstract, the focus of this PEP is on providing a minimal-but-solid foundation for further governance decisions. The specifics of this relationship would be figured out by the inaugural Council.