[AstroPy] Fwd: transferring ownership of astropy.org to numfocus

[Perry Greenfield]

[I had passed this along to the board to make sure that I wasn't  
saying anything controversial--no one commented on it so I figure it  
wasn't that far out of line; this may be useful in conjunction with  
Travis's response]

While there are a number of goals for the organization, I think it is  
fair to say that the primary one was to create a non-profit foundation  
that could be the focus of sponsorship efforts to help fund efforts in  
scientific Python to keep numpy, scipy, and other core projects at the  
forefront of science and engineering. While sponsorship is welcome  
from all areas, the hope is that significant amounts could be found  
from private companies, particularly those that are finding numerical  
Python useful for science, engineering, and finance.

As for stability, that is a reasonable point to raise. Would any  
concern about that be alleviated if there was a condition that  
ownership of domain name be transferred to some-to-be-named-entity  
should numfocus cease to be, stop being non-profit, or have a  
significant redirection in its charter?

Perry

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Paul Barrett <pebarrett at gmail.com>
> Date: June 8, 2012 7:04:10 AM EDT
> To: Perry Greenfield <perry at stsci.edu>
> Cc: astropy <astropy at scipy.org>
> Subject: Re: [AstroPy] transferring ownership of astropy.org to  
> numfocus
>
> On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Perry Greenfield <perry at stsci.edu>  
> wrote:
>> Currently the astropy.org domain is held by STScI. There was recent
>> discussion amongst the astropy coordinators whether this should be
>> held elsewhere. One natural place seemed to be the numfocus
>> organization that was recently formed. They are willing to own (and
>> pay the small annual fee) for the domain name. This seems like a
>> sensible solution to have the domain held by such a organization
>> rather than by a specific astronomical institution. But they wanted  
>> to
>> know if there was any objection from the astropy community before
>> doing so.
>
>> Is there any?
>
> Perry, can you provide more information about the numfocus
> organization?  I've looked at the web site, but do not get a clear
> picture of the organization's motivation and long term goals and
> stability. The latter aspect seems to be key issue, i.e., the long
> term stability.  Given the inherent instability of the scientific, and
> in particular, astronomical community, particularly during these times
> of reduced to non-existent funding, some additional clarification
> would be helpful.  I don't mean to be critical, given my lack of
> support to astropy during the last few years, but such an explanation
> would allow me to give my whole-hearted support to your request.
>
> While we are on the topic. Since, I have somewhat been maintaining and
> monitoring this, the astropy, maillist for about the past decade, do
> you envision this maillist to be integrated with the numfocus or
> astropy websites?
>
> -- Paul
>
>> For reference, here is a link to numfocus: http://numfocus.org
>>
>> Perry
>>
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