cutting off their nose

Posted Oct 27, 2025 21:19 UTC (Mon) by jhe (subscriber, #164815)
In reply to: cutting off their nose by corbet
Parent article: Python Software Foundation withdraws security-related grant proposal

DEI Programs work by supporting selected, disadvantaged people. Being disadvantaged is difficult to measure directly, so the these programs have to rely on proxy measurements. Because people get disadvantaged based on their looks or heritage, looks and heritage are good proxies to measure being disadvantaged.

I'm not implying whether this is "bad" or "working as intended", but its happening.

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cutting off their nose

Posted Oct 28, 2025 12:04 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> Being disadvantaged is difficult to measure directly, so the these programs have to rely on proxy measurements.

It's incomplete, not perfect either, not possible in every situation and not mutually exclusive but how about this extraordinary idea: gauging disadvantaged people by their... lack of money!? Too direct and not enough virtue signaling? Suspiciously successful in some other countries?

Note the past decades of affirmative action in college admissions have been called "affirmative action for the rich" by the NY Times which isn't exactly leaning on the right side:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/podcasts/the-daily/col... + many more articles on that topic.

PS: I totally understand why the PSF cannot take such a high risk.

cutting off their nose

Posted Oct 28, 2025 14:48 UTC (Tue) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

These are not mutually exclusive.

>DEI Programs work by supporting selected, disadvantaged people.

who have demonstrated the technical ability, but for some other reason have difficulty contributing. That's the selection: their ability. The people with the ability that aren't disadvantaged aren't in scope (obviously).

You either accept that:
* There is an intrinsic relationship between ability and being able to contribute to open-source, or
* There are people who have the ability, but can't for some reason that can be ameliorated.

If your argument is that DEI programs are spending money on people that don't actually have the technical ability, that's a different argument. I've seen no evidence of that though.

DEI programs target people who have technical ability AND are disadvantaged. Both criteria are important, you can't focus on one selection criteria and pretend the other isn't relevant.