↓Skip to main content

I'm delighted to rejoin the Sovereign Tech Fellowship

Python Sovereign-Tech-Fellowship
Hugo speaking at a Sovereign Tech Fellow event
Table of Contents

I’m happy to rejoin the Sovereign Tech Fellowship!

I was one of six participants in the 2025 pilot to pay maintainers of critical open source technologies in the public interest. By all accounts this first cohort was a resounding success, and I’m glad to see the programme continue.

It was wonderful to be part of the inaugural Sovereign Tech Fellowship, and incredibly beneficial to my projects: it gave me the time to focus on releasing Python 3.14 and 3.15 smoothly, to mentor and onboard others, and to support the wider community.

2025 impact #

The 2025 evaluation report covers all six of us and the benefits of the programme at a higher level. Here’s some of the specific things I achieved.

I was happy with how the big Python 3.14.0 release went. This is in part from having a good team to work with, and building on the past, but no doubt also due to being able to focus and invest time thanks to the Fellowship.

On many occasions, having time to dedicate to the role meant I could prioritise things as they occurred. For example, when needing to make expedited releases, I could dedicate time to go through all the necessary prep, and make the release without any stress of fitting it in around a regular job. Similarly, when last-minute problems came up on release day, such as newly-committed code not passing tests, I didn’t need to rush, and could contact the contributor to arrange a fix. Some other release managers had reverted similar changes to let the contributor try again for a later release, but there was less pressure for me and I could wait longer.

I was able to mentor other project members, such as helping onboard the next release manager, and also answer questions for other triagers. I promoted two new triagers in different projects. Other community members sometimes asked me about how to contribute. I attended many community “office hours” meetings and Monthly Conference Organisers' calls to share what’s going on and answer questions, and likewise blogged and shared on social media such as Mastodon, Bluesky and LinkedIn. I was able to attend many conferences and give talks about the upcoming release, and discuss with other attendees what happens with Python releases and the project in general. This all helps improve transparency. I also chaired many monthly Docs Working Group meetings, and attended many other meetings from different projects.

I was able to make many improvements in the release process, through additional automation and testing to remove tedious manual steps. I’ve improved the accessibility of websites visited by tens of millions per month.

I created a triage dashboard that helped us close hundreds of issues, and also complete forgotten backports including security fixes.

I was also able to invest time on non-technical, social, organisational and governance improvements. I’m proud my proposal was accepted to alternate the Language Summit between PyCon US and EuroPython, rather than always being in the US, to improve the diversity of voices of who will shape the future of Python. The 2026 summit will be held at EuroPython and I’m helping organise.

Since 2009, the summit has been a one-day event that takes place at PyCon US before the main conference days. It has also been held at EuroPython twice, in 2010 and 2011. The PSF mission is “to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers”, and not all potential attendees can travel to the US each year. This proposal took a lot of work:

  • In November 2024, the core team discussed on Discord the possibility of alternating the summit between PyCon US and EuroPython. People were in favour, but said it would need to be discussed at the summit at PyCon US in May 2025.
  • In March 2025, I asked for the topic to be added to the agenda, as I wasn’t attending.
  • In May, the discussion took place. The minutes simply said: “Watch out for a Discourse thread to discuss this.”
  • In July, during EuroPython, I asked summit attendees what the impression was, and they said people were in favour. I also spoke with the chair of EuroPython Society about the summit requirements, and they said they’d be happy to host us.
  • In August, because no Discourse thread had appeared, I opened a proposal to alternate.
  • In September, during the Steering Council Q&A at the Core Team Sprint, I asked about next steps. The consensus was for the SC to open a formal poll amongst the core team.
  • In October, the SC opened a poll for core team members.
  • In November, the poll concluded overwhelmingly in favour of alternating.
  • In December, the SC approved my request. I volunteered to help organise the summit and opened discussions with the EuroPython Society to make it happen in 2026.

I had more free time to spend on non-open source things, but also more free time to help the local Python community such as by co-organising two local meetups. One person I nominated became a Fellow of the Python Software Foundation and another of the EuroPython Society, which recognises the importance of community work.

Finally, I enjoyed our monthly Fellowship meetings where the six of us all gave a summary of our last month’s work. Similarly, it was great to meet most of them in person along with people from the Agency at the event to mark the inaugural Sovereign Tech Fellowship cohort and hear the results of the evaluation report.

Arbitrary statistics #

On GitHub:

  • Total contributions: 6,642
  • Issues created: 90
  • PRs created: 901
  • Issues closed: 446
  • PRs merged: 1,401
  • PRs closed: 142
  • Total issues involved with: 1,409
  • Total PRs involved with: 4,095
  • Repositories affected: 409

Made 55 releases:

  • 13 of Python 3.14
  • 3 of Python 3.15
  • 39 of PyPI projects

Started maintaining:

Archived:

Attended eight conferences in Berlin (FOSS Backstage and Design), Bologna (PyCon Italia), Prague (EuroPython), Athens (PyCon Greece), Manchester (PyCon UK), Tallinn (PyCon Estonia), Jyväskylä (PyCon Finland) and Stockholm (PyCon Sweden)

  • On a discussion panel at one
  • Gave a lightning talk at five
  • Announced PyCon Finland at four
  • Helped new contributors at sprints at three
  • Hosted a barcamp session at one
  • Helped organise one by reviewing talks and through promotion
  • Volunteered at one

Attended three online conferences:

  • March: SustainOSS Virtual Forum
  • May: Maintainer Summit
  • December: PyLadiesCon

Other events:

Meetups:

  • Co-organised 16 meetups for two groups, one which we restarted in 2025
  • Attended 27 meetups of 11 groups in four cities and three countries
  • Gave one long talk and four lightning talks

Docs Working Group:

User Success Workgroup:

  • Attended two meetings

Published 17 blog posts:

Reported 67 accounts to GitHub for spam/abuse/inauthentic activity.

2026 and beyond #

This time we’re 14 Fellows, and not only maintainers but also community managers and technical writers. It’s great that Python core dev Stan Ulbrych and PSF director Georgi Ker are also joining, and I’m looking forward to meeting the other Sovereign Tech Fellows.

I’m really pleased to again be working with the Sovereign Tech Agency. They’re showing the world some of the ways we can improve open source and critical digital infrastructure, through a range of different programmes. Their success has informed the proposal for an EU Sovereign Tech Fund (EU-STF), and they have also helped shape the European Digital Infrastructure Consortium for digital commons (DC-EDIC), with an EU-STF pilot kicking off later this month which builds on their experience. And it’s good to see the focus on maintenance and long-term sustainability in the brand new EU Open Source Strategy, announced just last week.

And by the way, the Sovereign Tech Agency are currently hiring, check out their open positions.

Header photo by Jan Michalko.