Tidelift is a startup trying to make open source software more sustainable by selling an open source subscription that pays maintainers. NumPy is eligible for a guaranteed $10,000 over 24 months -- are we interesting in signing up? https://blog.tidelift.com/1m-to-pay-open-source-maintainers-on-tidelift https://tidelift.com/lifter/search/pypi/numpy It looks like they've started out focused on web development. NumPy is the only project I see listed in the scientific computing space.
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 Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 2:27 PM Stephan Hoyer <shoyer@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, 18 Sep 2018 16:54:16 -0500, Andy Ray Terrel wrote:
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] Best regards, Stéfan [0] Quoting Fernando Pérez: "When people are expected to work on open source software for free, only the people who can afford to work for free can participate".
I've forwarded Donald this conversation. He said he is working on some of the finer details. He's up for chatting more in NYC next week so if we want to collect a set of questions it might be easy to get them all figured out there. On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 8:06 PM Stefan van der Walt <stefanv@berkeley.edu> wrote:
On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 6:04 PM, Stefan van der Walt <stefanv@berkeley.edu> wrote:
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
On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 10:01 PM Nathaniel Smith <njs@pobox.com> wrote:
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. -- Andy [0] https://tidelift.com/docs/lifting/agreement On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 10:01 PM Nathaniel Smith <njs@pobox.com> wrote:
On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 8:30 PM Andy Ray Terrel <andy.terrel@gmail.com> wrote:
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.
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
I agree. Ralf
On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 4:55 PM Stephan Hoyer <shoyer@gmail.com> wrote:
Yeah I'm reaching out to Don as we speak. I've known him for a number of years and chatted about NumFOCUS working with Tidelift last year but this program didn't exist. I think the real game changer is having an automated way to scan a clients code base and spit out the dependencies. I would love to have that to take to every institute we work with. "Here NASA if you don't support these codes the next rover could die" =D
I agree with the sentiment but you may need a better example... At least, numarray (which, with numeric, became numpy) was developed at NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute; and the same institute has been paying several developers of astropy (partially as they see it as the best way to get good data analysis pipelines for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope), one of which was Michael Droetboom (who you may know from matplotlib). Overall, in astronomy at least, NASA has been a wonderful force for open data and software. -- Marten.
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 Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 2:27 PM Stephan Hoyer <shoyer@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, 18 Sep 2018 16:54:16 -0500, Andy Ray Terrel wrote:
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] Best regards, Stéfan [0] Quoting Fernando Pérez: "When people are expected to work on open source software for free, only the people who can afford to work for free can participate".
I've forwarded Donald this conversation. He said he is working on some of the finer details. He's up for chatting more in NYC next week so if we want to collect a set of questions it might be easy to get them all figured out there. On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 8:06 PM Stefan van der Walt <stefanv@berkeley.edu> wrote:
On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 6:04 PM, Stefan van der Walt <stefanv@berkeley.edu> wrote:
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
On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 10:01 PM Nathaniel Smith <njs@pobox.com> wrote:
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. -- Andy [0] https://tidelift.com/docs/lifting/agreement On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 10:01 PM Nathaniel Smith <njs@pobox.com> wrote:
On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 8:30 PM Andy Ray Terrel <andy.terrel@gmail.com> wrote:
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.
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
I agree. Ralf
On Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 4:55 PM Stephan Hoyer <shoyer@gmail.com> wrote:
Yeah I'm reaching out to Don as we speak. I've known him for a number of years and chatted about NumFOCUS working with Tidelift last year but this program didn't exist. I think the real game changer is having an automated way to scan a clients code base and spit out the dependencies. I would love to have that to take to every institute we work with. "Here NASA if you don't support these codes the next rover could die" =D
I agree with the sentiment but you may need a better example... At least, numarray (which, with numeric, became numpy) was developed at NASA's Space Telescope Science Institute; and the same institute has been paying several developers of astropy (partially as they see it as the best way to get good data analysis pipelines for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope), one of which was Michael Droetboom (who you may know from matplotlib). Overall, in astronomy at least, NASA has been a wonderful force for open data and software. -- Marten.
participants (6)
-
Andy Ray Terrel -
Marten van Kerkwijk -
Nathaniel Smith -
Ralf Gommers -
Stefan van der Walt -
Stephan Hoyer