🎺 Life after Jazzband 🎷

[webknjaz]

@sirosen I just saw the announcement @jezdez made about sunsetting the community: https://jazzband.co/news/2026/03/14/sunsetting-jazzband.

I guess, my earlier protest against moving to @pypa no longer applies. Should we start the process already?

[sirosen]

My schedule this week is going to be very busy, so I was thinking that I might personally benefit from waiting a week before we make the move. But I think we should do it soon.

In a couple of different places I've seen some offers of support from pypa committers to help us with the move. In particular, Richard Si offered to sponsor the requisite vote (which I think happens on the listhost, IIRC?) to bring the project in.

Since it would be nice for me to wait a week, I think we can take the time to think about whether or not we want to do explicit outreach at all to past contributors and maintainers, or take any other communication related steps. I'm inclined not to do anything extra right now, other than post about it when we make the move.

[webknjaz]

Just posted a vote: https://mail.python.org/archives/list/pypa-committers@python.org/thread/QOWFH2ZAYYFNIYEEK4PODE56JW5RWCWL/

[sirosen]

Thanks for kicking off the vote!

I went to +1 it but I think I'm missing from the list; I'll check with folks to get that sorted out.

I'll probably write up a short post for past contributors to say something like:
"We still value and welcome the help of everyone who has worked on the project -- please come and see us in our new home in pypa!"

If anyone who has a past record of involvement wants privileges to triage issues, merge PRs, or run releases, I would be a little bit surprised, but we could discuss it on a case by case basis. I know folks are still invested in the project, but it has felt to me like people are happy for me to take care of a lot of the management work (and I'm okay doing it! 😁 ).

[webknjaz]

Sounds good!

---

I know the ML may get out-of-sync — this happened in the past and I think it's maintained manually. I'm sure someone like @pradyunsg, or @di, or @JacobCoffee, can sort it out..

[di]

@sirosen Just accepted your membership request for the mailinglist.

[sirosen]

Thanks much! I was going to ping you or Pradyun on discord, but I guess it's already done. I'll go put in my vote. :)

[impredicative]

With Astral, the author of uv, being acquired by OpenAI, ostensibly eventually risking freezing the development of uv, the sunsetting of Jazzband comes as terrible news, as a double shock for the Python community. I hope that pip-tools can find a new home.

I think an obvious solution to AI-generated PRs is AI-generated review gates before a human reviewer steps in, but not so that this blocks good-effort or good-faith PRs.

[sirosen]

I just want to send a short reassurance here:

We're committed to continuing to maintain and support pip-tools. Both @webknjaz and I, the current leads, are already pypa committers on other projects, so I don't think we'll find the move particularly tricky on any technical grounds.
Personally, I think it's very important that pip-tools continues to exist and guard against the potential for a "uv monoculture" in Python. Just as I hope that pdm, hatch, poetry, and many other tools in overlapping spaces continue to thrive.

Moving to pypa ownership (which seems more or less decided at this point) will close off a way for us to onboard new maintainers. Even under Jazzband, expanding the maintainer pool is already a difficult and primarily social process.

I'm hopeful that we can make the move without losing the interest and support of many of the long-time contributors to the project -- many of whom have involvement dating back even further than my own!

[webknjaz]

With how @davidism put it in https://mas.to/@davidism/116256117788907333, I expect more people to get routed here. And yes, we'll get a new home — I don't think anyone at PyPA will oppose it.

[WhyNotHugo]

Happy to see swift consensus on the topic :)

[webknjaz]

Yeah.. It helps that we've also met IRL last year and discovered aligned views on maintenance and development in general... Though, back then I felt like moving might reduce contributing opportunities for people (different exposure et al). So now that there's the move is mandatory, the way forward seems obvious.

[sirosen]

@atugushev, @davidovich, @vphilippon

As past maintainers of pip-tools still listed as leads in Jazzband, I want to make sure you are all aware of the end of Jazzband and the plan to move to PyPA. I will also be reaching out to you each by email (based on available info) to try to make sure you're informed.

Jannis has suggested that we should extend invitations to join PyPA to each of you. In principle, I agree, but only if you are interested in resuming work on pip-tools.

As a newer maintainer, and longtime user, of pip-tools, I have nothing but gratitude and respect for the work you and other past maintainers have all put in. But I assume that you've all moved on from the project -- and that's okay. ❤️

[hugovk]

@atugushev, @davidovich, @vphilippon

And regardless of whether you wish to join the PyPA, as project leads, please could you confirm if you're happy for pip-tools to move to the PyPA?

Thanks also for all your work on pip-tools, we use it for releasing Python itself :)

[vphilippon]

Hello, and thanks @sirosen for reaching out by email :)
I now get to write a message I wanted to do for a while now.

As you've expected, I have moved on from the pip-tools project for a while now.
I also had in mind to enventually™️ask to officially step down from my lead role on pip-tools, to better reflect my distance from the project and get rid of the risk of someone using my account to perform malicious releases while I wasn't paying attention.
So this is pretty much the perfect time to communiate that.

So yes, I'm absolutly ok with the move to PyPA for pip-tools.
And I would rather not take any role or label as an active contributor at this time. I will leave this honor (and responsibility) to those currently taking care of this glorious puzzle that is pip-tools and python dependency management!

If at some point I get back to contributing to pip-tools, it won't be by just jumping back in and bumping those who picked up the torch after me.

Note that you may all still reach out to me if you need me for something, although I can't guarantee a timely response.

I'm sincerly proud of my contribution to pip-tools and my role as lead on the project, and knowing that it still has a positive impact leaves me with a joyfull tear. Ok, many joyfull tears it turns out.

Thank you all for your contributions too, and I hope that you get to feel as happy as I am about that, despite the challenges, and frustrations, that come with FOSS contribution.

Best wishes! ❤️

[webknjaz]

🔔 @atugushev @davidovich could you confirm you received this notification? We need to gather opinions of everybody listed as leads in the Jazzband database.

---

Observations:

Looks like atugushev hasn't been (really) active on GitHub since late 2024 — there's only a few commits to their own dotfiles since. No activity on Mastodon but there's recent comments on LinkedIn, including Jannis' post — I pinged them there seeing that this is probably the best way to make sure the message is received: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7438604986915237888/?dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A%287439034806618796032%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7438604986915237888%29&dashReplyUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A%287442526295646806016%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7438604986915237888%29.

And davidovich had some sparse activity in the previous years. The last activity on LinkedIn was almost a year ago. There was a merge of one PR in a personal repo a week ago so maybe they'll get this message...

[davidovich]

Sorry for the silence. I am still there, but have now moved on to other things than Python, and I should have a long time ago asked to be removed from a responsibility I couldn't even hold.

I would gladly see pip-tools go on in PyPA.

Thanks for everyone's contributions on this small project that grew!

[atugushev]

Happy to see pip-tools as part of PyPA 👍🏻 Let's go!

[webknjaz]

🗺️ Migration planning 🛩️

@sirosen now that I declared the vote complete ¹, we can start planning the move. Here's a few things that come to mind for the TODO-list (feel free to edit this message and add more!):

• The PyPI project needs to get sirosen and webknjaz added as Owners (@jezdez)

• The sirosen and webknjaz accounts should be invited to the the RTD project as maintainers too (@jezdez) — this has actually been done long ago

• The @sirosen and @webknjaz accounts should be added to the the GH repository as Admins (@jezdez)

• The GitHub repository needs to be transferred to @pypa (@jezdez or one of the maintainers if configured before the transfer)

  💡 Tip: I imagine this should be possible via https://github.com/jazzband/pip-tools/transfer, by selecting the Specify an organization or username option and typing in pypa

• Any links to the current Jazzband repository URL (or just a jazzband/pip-tools) slug have to be mass-replaced both in the Git repository (places like docs and core packaging metadata etc.) and in the web interface of the repo if applicable (anybody)

• References to the CoC and Jazzband-specific processes should be replaced with the PyPA ones — this one probably can't be automated fully (anybody)

Footnotes

1. The @pypa vote completion annoucenent: https://mail.python.org/archives/list/pypa-committers@python.org/message/RMEHCGGJ6EW7EWYZ77H6RWBRKMZ3GLWO/ ↩

[sirosen]

Although I'm very much wanting to do the move, and this plan seems reasonable, I really want to wait for @jezdez to send out his planned notice to all Jazzband projects before we take further steps.

Based on some of our communications regarding the vote, I think that he was not prepared for us to start the move. I assume he has a plan for how all Jazzband projects will "transfer out" -- we may be able to make this easier on him by following that process. And I'm sure if there are any things where we have conflicts or problems that he'd work with us to sort it out. 🙂

[hugovk]

There's a detailed plan at https://jazzband.co/news/2026/03/14/wind-down-plan:

• outreach: March-May
• transfers: June-December

[webknjaz]

That article says "Several projects have already successfully transferred" and "If you have questions or want to start the process early" at the very end which gives me an impression that we don't need to wait.

Additionally, I realized that the RTD point is already fulfilled so Jannis only needs to handle PyPI+GH ownership and we'd be able to proceed.

[pradyunsg]

FWIW, the GH transfer will grant admin rights to the relevant people, so y'all don't need admin on the repository before that.

[webknjaz]

@pradyunsg yep, that's about right. Though, on the Jazzband side, @jezdez is the only one who can initiate it.