Great news, Nathaniel! It was a huge boost to matplotlib a couple of years ago when we got an FTE, even if it was just for a few months. While that effort didn't directly produce any new features, we were able to overhaul some very old parts of the codebase. Probably why the effort was so successful was that, 1) Michael had a clear idea of what needed work and how to achieve it and 2) the components impacted were mostly not user-facing.

With respect to off-list conversations, one thing that the matplotlib devs have done is set up a weekly Google Hangouts session. A summary of that meeting is then posted to the mailing list. A practice like that (posting summaries of regular meetings) might be sufficient to feed off-line discussions back to the greater community.


Cheers!
Ben Root


On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 4:43 AM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,

On Sun, May 14, 2017 at 10:56 PM, Charles R Harris
<charlesr.harris@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, May 13, 2017 at 11:45 PM, Nathaniel Smith <njs@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> As some of you know, I've been working for... quite some time now to
>> try to secure funding for NumPy. So I'm excited that I can now
>> officially announce that BIDS [1] is planning to hire several folks
>> specifically to work on NumPy. These will full time positions at UC
>> Berkeley, postdoc or staff, with probably 2 year (initial) contracts,
>> and the general goal will be to work on some of the major priorities
>> we identified at the last dev meeting: more flexible dtypes, better
>> interoperation with other array libraries, paying down technical debt,
>> and so forth. Though I'm sure the details will change as we start to
>> dig into things and engage with the community.
>>
>> More details soon; universities move slowly, so nothing's going to
>> happen immediately. But this is definitely happening and I wanted to
>> get something out publicly before the conference season starts – so if
>> you're someone who might be interested in coming to work with me and
>> the other awesome folks at BIDS, then this is a heads-up: drop me a
>> line and we can chat! I'll be at PyCon next week if anyone happens to
>> be there. And feel free to spread the word.
>
>
> Excellent news. Do you have any sort of timeline in mind?
>
> It will be interesting to see what changes this leads to, both in the code
> and in the project sociology.

I was thinking the same thing - if this does come about, it would
likely have a big impact on practical governance.  It could also mean
that more important development conversations happen off-list.   It
seems to me it would be good to plan for this consciously.

Cheers,

Matthew
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