Guido van Rossum

In October 2025, the Python Software Foundation unanimously voted to withdraw from a $1.5 million NSF research grant that required affirming the PSF would not operate any DEI programs during the grant period. Van Rossum publicly endorsed the decision, writing 'kudos to the PSF for standing for its values (which are also my values)' and backed it with a personal donation.

On March 8, 2022, Guido van Rossum posted on LinkedIn: 'Stand with Ukraine. The Python logo has Ukrainian colors!' He encouraged donations: 'Here's a web site with many links to organizations helping in Ukraine. Please consider donating; every bit helps.' This demonstrated public opposition to Russian aggression during the 2022 invasion.

On July 12, 2018, Guido van Rossum stepped down from his position as 'Benevolent Dictator For Life' (BDFL) of Python, stating 'I'm tired, and need a very long break.' Rather than appointing a successor, he eliminated the BDFL title entirely. In December 2018, the Python community voted to adopt a steering council model with distributed decision-making. This represented a voluntary surrender of power to enable more democratic, sustainable governance.

Van Rossum consistently advocated for diversity in the Python community and broader tech industry. He described himself as 'born feminist' citing his mother's influence, and actively mentored women engineers at Dropbox. He publicly spoke about the lack of women in Python core development and worked to make the community more inclusive.

At the 2002 FOSDEM conference in Brussels, FSF President Richard Stallman presented Guido van Rossum the FSF Award for the Advancement of Free Software 'for inventing and implementing as Free Software the Python programming language.' This recognized Python's contribution to the free software movement and its design goal of being open source so anyone can contribute to its development.

Guido van Rossum created Python in 1991 and maintained it as open source software. Python became one of the world's most popular programming languages, widely used in web development, data science, AI/ML, and education. Van Rossum served as Python's 'Benevolent Dictator for Life' until 2018, ensuring the language remained open and community-governed.