[Cython] funding (Re: sage.math problems?)

[mark florisson]

On 22 March 2012 21:53, Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml at behnel.de> wrote:
> Robert Bradshaw, 22.03.2012 19:39:
>> On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 10:52 AM, Stefan Behnel wrote:
>>> Regarding funding in general, maybe we should just start putting up one or
>>> two of those sexy funding bars on our web site, like the PyPy devs do for
>>> their funded projects. Assuming that goes well, it would also allow us to
>>> put money on dedicated projects by paying basically ourselves for doing
>>> tasks that we won't normally spend our precious spare time on (e.g. because
>>> they appear too large for a weekend), but that we and our users deem
>>> necessary for some reason.
>>
>> While that's a good idea in theory, I'm not sure how many additional
>> hours would be freed up just because we could pay ourselves for it.
>
> And if more than one person frees hours for a given project, how would we
> distribute the money? And how do we know we can still trust each other when
> it comes to counting the hours? ;)
>
>
>> Perhaps it would act primarily as an additional incentive to align our
>> efforts with user request (though there are certainly already
>> non-monetary incentives).
>
> There sure are, and I'm sure that won't change. We should see it as an
> addition to what we invest voluntarily. No-one's going to pay for code
> cleanup and refactoring, for example, or for tweaks and "having fun at the
> weekend" code and "I hate that being slow" optimisations.
>
> We are not necessarily talking about large projects here that represent
> person months of value. If I were to decide if I'd start implementing a
> feature that looks like taking me, say, 10 days, and I'm not seriously
> self-motivated in doing it, I won't even start because I know that I'll
> have enough other things to do in the meantime that weigh in equally for
> me. But, when I know I'll be paid for doing it, I'll certainly consider
> shifting my priorities. And even if it takes three months to finish it in
> my spare time, it would still be done in the end, which is much better than
> just staying an open tracker entry forever.
>
>
>> the
>> monetization of Cython development changes the spirit of things a bit,
>> and while I am a big fan of people being able to make money, or even a
>> living, off of open source development
>
> I think if that works depends a lot on what you do exactly, who the users
> are and also what you do in order to sell it (and yourself). It doesn't
> work for every project and certainly not for everyone.
>
>
>> it complicates things a lot
>> from a legal, financial, and political perspective.
>
> Yes, I'm seeing that, too. But in any case, before it comes to asking for
> donations for a given feature/project/fix/whatever, one of the first
> questions will be: who can do it? And when? I think that will kill a lot of
> political hassle early enough (although hopefully not the project in
> question ;).
>
>
>> The current model of organization X is willing to pay developer Y for
>> feature Z directly seems to work well enough for the moment.
>
> That would still work. However, a donation based model would allow us to
> lower the barrier. Paying a whole feature may be too much for a single
> (smaller) company, and they would have to know exactly what they want in
> order to ask us to do it for them. If, instead, we put up a list of
> projects we consider worth doing and they can make a donation of, say, 5%
> or 10% of the actual sum and let others pay for the same feature as well,
> they can just use it to show their appreciation for the general gain we
> give them, without desperately needing a given feature themselves. It would
> also allow users to contribute money for "nice to have" features, which is
> otherwise less likely to happen.
>
>
>> E.g. with
>> GSoC, the bottleneck is finding good enough students and time to
>> mentor them, not slots (=funding).
>
> The mentors are not getting paid in a GSoC. So we invest our time by
> guiding the student, and that's regardless of the usability of the outcome.
> Even if there is an outcome, it's not unheard of that the mere overhead of
> cleaning up and integrating the contribution comes close to reimplementing
> it. It doesn't always work out as well as with Dag and Mark.
>
> I'm not saying GSoCs are bad - we've certainly had a boost of overall
> development power through them. But they are just one way to fund the
> development, and not always the best one.
>
>
>> Opening up funding to non-students
>> could help a bit, but IMHO wouldn't change the balance that much (the
>> gainfully employed cost a lot more and have less spare time).
>
> It's certainly not the right way to attract new developers. But it's a way
> to advance the development.
>
> Stefan
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This may be OT for this thread, but sas numpy removed at some point
from Jenkins? I'm seeing this for all python versions since Februari
25:

Following tests excluded because of missing dependencies on your system:
   run.memoryviewattrs
   run.numpy_ValueError_T172
   run.numpy_bufacc_T155
   run.numpy_cimport
   run.numpy_memoryview
   run.numpy_parallel
   run.numpy_test
ALL DONE