Python rejects $1.5M grant from U.S. govt. fearing ethical compromise

Obtaining government funding is generally not a particularly easy task. Companies, research groups and individual professionals struggle to obtain the funds they need to finance their activities, often ending up without any support whatsoever. The Python Software Foundation, on the other hand, recently withdrew its proposal for a £1.5 million grant from the US National Science Foundation (NSF), an unusual move considering the ongoing need for financial support.

The funding in question would have been provided by the National Science Foundation through an initiative aimed at financing research and development activities, the “Safety, Security, and Privacy of Open Source Ecosystems” programme. The Python Software Foundation's proposal was submitted in early 2025, and any funding obtained would have been used to address security vulnerabilities in Python and the Python Package Index (PyPI).

However, along with the approval of the funding, the NSF imposed restrictive clauses that directly conflicted with the PSF's ethics, specifically requiring recipients to affirm that they would not run programmes that “promote or support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)”.