[pypy-svn] r8692 - pypy/funding

[hpk at codespeak.net]

Author: hpk
Date: Sat Jan 29 11:37:30 2005
New Revision: 8692

Added:
   pypy/funding/physical-person-model.txt   (contents, props changed)
Log:
a first draft of the Physical Persons model 
as we discussed it at previous meetings. 



Added: pypy/funding/physical-person-model.txt
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+++ pypy/funding/physical-person-model.txt	Sat Jan 29 11:37:30 2005
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+
+"Physical Persons" in the PyPy EU project 
+========================================= 
+
+Introduction
+------------
+
+The PyPy partners strongly emphasized in their proposal 
+(as accepted by the EU commission) that they want 
+to openly involve external experts and open source developers
+into our agile development process.  This particular view of 
+Open Source development was summarized in the proposal 
+as follows:: 
+
+    B4.6 Resources to be mobilized 
+    (...) 
+    And the third, and most important resource to be mobilised, is
+    people. This is where this Consortium really shines. Not only
+    have we already attracted some of the top people in the Python
+    community in this project, we also have a plan to continue to
+    attract the interest, support, and constructive criticism of
+    the very best. The Open Source movement is all about
+    community. This fact is often overlooked by people who are
+    discovering Open Source for the first time, who mistakenly
+    believe that it is all about licensing . Successful Open
+    Source projects are based on sharing and trust, process rather
+    than product, and key people. The same is true of Agile
+    development methods, as defined by the Agile Alliance. 
+
+We also explained up-front that we want to amend the contract
+to allow researchers, experts and open source developers to
+get a full refund for their travel and accomodation costs in
+exchange for receiving their participation, work time and
+contributions. We promised this to the various communities and
+people we are attached to and we are set to follow up on this. 
+
+Quote from our accepted proposal:: 
+
+    B.4.2 Foreseen amendments 
+
+    It is intended that some of the experts who participate in
+    the sprint workshops access the consortium with the status of
+    physical persons. The exact list of such persons is not and
+    cannot be known before hand. As they become known, they will
+    be added to the project consortium trough an amendment to the
+    contract. In the original contract preparation forms, the
+    budget for these physical persons was assigned to the
+    University of Southampton. 
+
+The central role of "sprint workshops" is also obvious from 
+the start of our "B.5 project management" chapter:: 
+
+    Both the project and the development process are based
+    around critical workshops, so called "sprints" that will take
+    place on a six week cycle throughout the project (24 months).
+    Around these sprints input and output to stakeholders will be
+    structured.  
+
+    (...) 
+
+    The sprints will be the forum in which knowledge will be
+    shared and the transparency within the project organisation
+    will be measured. We will during the project focus on
+    evaluating and documenting our project method and share
+    knowledge and experience in that area as well. It is our goal
+    that the overall deliverables from this project will be a
+    functioning PyPy as well as an effective project method for
+    agile development/Open Source projects. Our goal is also to
+    disseminate this knowledge to the developer communities inside
+    and outside the Open Source movement as well as to commercial
+    and academic organisations. 
+
+
+It is thus a primary issue for the PyPy partners to implement
+the models and measures neccessary to interact and invite 
+the wide community of experts and interested developers. 
+
+The model of getting physical persons into the consortium
+---------------------------------------------------------
+
+We want to have a lightweight process ("swinging door principle") 
+for integrating physical persons into the EU project.  The technical 
+board is to actively invite people and partners to join our
+sprints and other developments.  The board will select people
+according to criterias like usefulness for the project, 
+past contributions and specific fields of knowledge. 
+
+However, on  the formal side there are still some details to
+resolve and we ask everyone, including our EU project officer
+and the national EU offices we have contacts to, to help us in
+setting up a model that can then be reused by other open 
+and transparent projects as well. 
+
+Here are some of the issues and our proposed solutions: 
+
+- physical persons enter the EU contract by means of    
+  an Accession form. They are to get reimbursement for their 
+  travel and accomodation costs but not for their work 
+  costs. (See 2.4.7 of the Financial Guidelines from 04/2004). 
+  We do not think that we will have phyiscal persons with 
+  full accounting systems and thus expect them to use 
+  the AC model (in a very simple way). 
+
+- Regarding cost reimbursement we would like to reimburse 
+  costs to the acceeded physical persons attending sprints 
+  while they are on the sprint venue.  They should usually 
+  receive the money after we received copies of their 
+  receipts for travel/accomodation costs.  The EU commission 
+  only prepays 80% of the full funding amount, yet we may 
+  like to reimburse 100% of their costs directly to minimize 
+  later distribution work.  
+
+- physical persons also sign an amendment to our Consortium
+  contract. Here we need to specialize their membership 
+  internally in order to allow the consortium to continue
+  to act efficiently.  In other words, we cannot make the
+  physical persons full members of the consortium because
+  it would make meetings and decisions ever more difficult. 
+
+  Therefore, physical persons are to enter as "associated
+  partners" which waive their voting rights and are not
+  required to attend consortium meetings. we consider this
+  mostly an internal details of the consortium than something
+  the EU commission has to care about. 
+
+- We want physical persons to _not_ participate in the 
+  general common liability of the full consortium partners 
+  towards the EU commission.  We feel that it is unwarranted 
+  to receive work and contribution "for free" from sprint 
+  participants and then make them liable if the consortium 
+  cannot deliver as promised to the EU. 
+
+- sprint participants/physical persons should at best 
+  also not be required to deliver audit certificates. 
+  If this is not feasible then we need to find an auditor who
+  is willing to audit the cost statements of the physical
+  persons in a way that does not affect the management budget.
+  (The costs for audit certificates are accounted to the
+  management budget).  If audit certificates even for one or
+  two-time attenders of sprints then we kindly ask the EU
+  commission for special allowance to not count the according
+  costs to the "7% management Cap" rule. 
+
+
+Time frame 
+----------
+
+We would like to setup the full model and process for
+getting physical persons into the EU project by mid 
+February 2005.  We have a number of people already interested
+and many of them are already explicitely mentioned in 
+the proposal (B.4.2.1.4 and B.4.2.2.1). 
+
+Feedback 
+-------- 
+
+Please direct any feedback to pypy-funding at codespeak.net or to
+Laura Creighton <lac at strakt.com> and Holger Krekel
+<krekel at merlinux.de> who have been tasked by the partners
+to find a workable and efficient model for sprint participants 
+to enter the project as physical persons. 
+