2026-07-17 –, Theatre Hall (S2)
We’re living in weird times. The lines and connections that hold allies and trusted partners together are changing. New barriers to trade, to travel, to collaboration are affecting everything we do. Python is not immune to these shifts, but internationally stewarded open source is still the best choice if you are looking for software that does what it says it does and doesn’t do a lot of things that you don’t want it to do.
Large open source projects are vetted by multiple stakeholders in different counties, using that software for different purposes and running on all different hardware around the world. Increasingly, large projects like Python come with a Software Bill of Materials and massive new patches coming from brand new contributors are looked at with a little more skepticism than they would’ve been a few years ago. This talk will discuss what’s changed about international collaboration and how Python and other community driven projects are looking at security and collaboration these days.
Deb Nicholson is an open source software policy expert and a passionate community advocate. She is the Executive Director at the Python Software Foundation which serves as the non-profit steward of the Python programming language. She’s won the O’Reilly Open Source Award and the Award for the Advancement of Free Software for her efforts to broaden the free and open source software movement. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Spritely Institute and on the Advisory Board for Computer Science at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. She lives with her husband and her lucky black cat in Cambridge, Massachusetts.