Call for Grant Proposals

[Maurice LING]

Thank you for you help. Please see inserts below.

Aahz wrote:

> Speaking as a PSF member who is or has been on some of the operating
> committees, but not a member of the PSF board or the grant committee:
> 
> In article <410ef314$1 at news.unimelb.edu.au>,
> Maurice LING  <mauriceling at acm.org> wrote:
> 
>>2. Will there be any form of intellectual property claims, including, 
>>copyrights, trade marks, patents, on any form of work generated from the 
>>PSF Grant by the Python Software Foundation (PSF) or any of its 
>>associates? If so, what are the precise nature of it? This is important 
>>as it may injure the research work and subsequently, the resultant 
>>thesis and publications directing towards the award of my degree.
> 
> 
> There will be no claims by the PSF itself unless you assign your work;
> that follows more-or-less from choosing projects that are are Open
> Source.

Thanks. Quite obviously I cannot do something that will not count 
towards my degree at this stage.

> 
> 
>>3. On the website (http://www.python.org/psf/call-2004.html), it is 
>>stated that the project of which the grant is granted for must be 
>>completed by October 30, 2005. In event of failure to meet, what will be 
>>the penalities?
>>
>>4. From Question 3, what constitutes partial failure or complete failure 
>>of the project?
> 
> 
> We don't know.  We're feeling our way into this.  I suspect people would
> rather take a wait-and-see attitude until we actually have to deal with
> these issues.
> 
This is by itself a tricky issue. But as with all projects, a majority 
of them don't end up as expected, otherwise, the world would have stop 
our dependency on fossil fuels years ago. Is there any general 
guidelines yet?

> 
>>5. From Question 4, it is stated on the website 
>>(http://www.python.org/psf/call-2004.html) that a delivery plan is 
>>essential in the proposal. How will delay in delivery affect the payment 
>>plan and the grant on the whole?
> 
> 
> We're talking about US$40K in grants total; I expect that grants will
> simply be issued up-front for the most part.  (The PSF's total monetary
> resources right now are around US$115K.)  I'd expect that if a grant
> proposal ties payments to delivery targets, the penalty for missing
> delivery will be delay of the next grant payment.
> 
> We're putting a certain amount of formalism into this because we have
> to; however, you'll be much better off if you think of this as "Python
> community money" that's being spread around to grease projects that are
> having trouble getting traction.  There are basically two and only two
> criteria that really matter:
> 
> * Will this project benefit a large portion of the Python community?
> 
> * Will giving money to this project move it forward?
> 
> Instead of asking general questions like this, why don't you simply tell
> us what your proposal is, and we'll help you refine it before you send
> it in to the grant committee?

I do wish I can put down my proposal now but I'm unable to do so due to 
NDAs. Especially when this forum is public. That is why I can only state 
my problems very generally and the only time I can disclose it in 
entirety is in the proposal itself.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers
Maurice
-- 
Maurice Han Tong LING, BSc(Hons)(Biochem), AdvDipComp, SN