On 25 January 2017 at 15:29, M.-A. Lemburg mal@egenix.com wrote:
I also believe that the PSF should start stepping up and invest some money into helping with Python support. A lot of money is being spent on community work, but hardly any on development work at the moment.
Software maintenance is a commercial support activity that is normally done for profit, so the PSF needs to be careful in how it approaches it to avoid getting in trouble with the IRS (public interest charities like the PSF operate under different taxation rules from trade associations like the Linux and OpenStack Foundations, and hence have a different set of constraints on their activities).
By doing so, the PSF could also attract more sponsors, since sponsoring would then have a real tangible benefit to the sponsors.
This is the aspect the PSF needs to be careful about, as it's treading very close to the line of activities that are better suited to a trade association or for-profit corporation.
Something along the lines of the Twisted or Django fellowship would likely be feasible - that would involve a grant request from the core development community to fund someone to focus full-time on issue triage and patch review for a designated period of time.
We'd need volunteers to help out with the review and selection process for applicants for the role, as well as a volunteer to actually write a grant proposal (including coming up with measurable objectives to help the PSF judge whether or not the grant was a success).
Cheers, Nick.