[Numpy-discussion] Tidelift

[Nathaniel Smith]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 6:04 PM, Stefan van der Walt
<stefanv at berkeley.edu> wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Sep 2018 16:54:16 -0500, Andy Ray Terrel wrote:
>> FYI, Donald Fischer will be at the NumFOCUS forum next week if folks want
>> to talk to him about it. It looks like individuals sign up with Tidelift
>> and perform services to be paid this money. Looking at the contract it
>> doesn't seem like something that works with anything but individuals or for
>> profit companies. Thus I don't know that "Numpy is eligible" more that
>> "Numpy developers are eligible".
>
> On the website, they ask that all the maintainers discuss together how
> the funds will be applied (the total given is for the project as a
> whole).
>
> This seems tricky: all the maintainers are spending their time on the
> project.  Which ones will get paid?  Will the ones getting paid be
> expected to put in extra hours on top of what they are already doing, or
> will they carry a more "formal" responsibility?  Perhaps it makes sense
> to fund specific activities, such as being release manager, that
> increase the amount of time donated to the project?
>
> There are other subtleties: some developers work for companies that do
> not allow them to get paid for external consulting, others have visa
> issues that prevent them from working for compensation.
>
> One useful gain could be to incentivize those who would otherwise not be
> able to contribute.  Parents taking care of children, those who take
> second jobs to survive, students, etc. [0]

Assuming the details work out, and that it really is "free money" for
doing the things we're already doing, then I guess the obvious
approach would be to accept, put the money into the NumFOCUS project
account (alongside the money we get from donations etc.), and then
distribute it using the existing mechanisms for managing that money.
If it's really only $5k/year, then that's comparable to what we
currently get and we can use it to fund meetings or whatever; if it's
more, then we can consider using some to contract with individuals to
work on numpy, or whatever makes sense.

-n

-- 
Nathaniel J. Smith -- https://vorpus.org