OSS: How is Django
Maintained*?

11 September 2026
Python Leadership Roundtable
Alex Hatfield

* Not exhaustive — but pretty solid, and certainly the main bits.

Open source — code anyone can use and change
Django — a batteries-included Python web framework

Both are definitions the room mostly already has - go fast, don't teach. Open source: the move to make is that open source is not mainly a licensing fact. The licence is the floor. What actually distinguishes it is that the process is public and the labour is unassignable - you can persuade contributors, never task them. That constraint shapes every gate in the flow we're about to walk, and it's also the thing that DOESN'T hold inside our own companies. Worth planting that now; the room will pick at it later. Django: now narrow to the example. The point is age and philosophy. Django is old enough that its process has been stress-tested, and opinionated enough that it has to decide what does and doesn't belong in core. The published design philosophy means "does this fit Django?" is a question the intake process can answer rather than a matter of taste.

Who maintains Django

Governance structure & roles

Steering Council — elected; rules on direction and significant changes
Mergers — appointed by the Steering Council; the only ones who commit to main
Fellows — paid contributors who triage, review and keep the lights on
Wider community

What maintains Django

Tool	What it’s used for
Django website	Docs, downloads, news and release notes (`djangoproject.com`)
Django Forum (Discourse)	Discussion before decision (`forum.djangoproject.com`)
Discord	Real-time chat and help for new contributors
Security email	The one private channel, for vulnerabilities
Trac	Tickets and triage (`code.djangoproject.com`)
GitHub	Repos, pull requests, code review, CI checks and feature ideas
Transifex	Where the community writes translations

How is Django maintained

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100%

Over to the Room

Are there aspects of Django’s process worth borrowing for our own work — and anything from how we work that could improve Django’s contribution process?
Has anyone got experience contributing to other open source projects? How does it compare?
What is AI doing to open source?