[Numpy-discussion] Tidelift

Tue Sep 18 23:34:53 EDT 2018

On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 8:30 PM Andy Ray Terrel <andy.terrel at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 10:01 PM Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>
>
I agree, most people with regular employment contracts  will either not be
able to do this, or spend significant effort (e.g. submitting and getting
their employer to sign a conflict of interest statement). See
https://tidelift.com/docs/lifting/agreement - that's a lot of legalese to
deal with. Also, you'll become responsible for taxes etc.

> >
>> > 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,
>
>
it's not, there's definitely paperwork involved which is not free. plus
you're giving some kind of guarantee, so in case of license issues etc the
person(s) who sign up are committed to work on them - no hard timeline
given, but clearly an expectation.

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
>
>
>
>
> The contract [0] mentions:
>
>  "Tidelift wants to pay you to provide certain software maintenance,
> support, analysis, or other services to Tidelift and Tidelift’s Subscribers
> (the “Service,” as further defined below), and you want to provide such
> services."
>
> Depending on the context of these services, money to a 501c3 might not be
> the best approach. There is some nuance to whether a company is paying for
> a public good or a non-profit is providing a private service. At a minimum
> if it is really "only doing the work maintainers do anyways" then we need
> to write a better contract that says that. On the other hand if it is $5K
> for a small set of independent consultants, it might be nice money for
> folks but is a far cry from "paying the maintainers" model that they are
> marketing, more like "paying consultants" which is a lucrative business for
> many already. I would love to see it grow to paying a living wage to all
> maintainers so I think it is in our interest to try and help Tidelift
> overcome some of these challenges.
>

I agree.

Ralf

> -- Andy
>
> [0] https://tidelift.com/docs/lifting/agreement
>
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 10:01 PM Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> 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
>> _______________________________________________
>> NumPy-Discussion mailing list
>> NumPy-Discussion at python.org
>> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/numpy-discussion
>>
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