[Matrix-SIG] advocacy

[Joe Harrington]

> > A year and a half ago, Paul Barrett and I put in a proposal to NASA
> > with a number of list members as Collaborators.  The proposal would
> > have covered some programmers' and doc writers' salaries to make and
> > distribute a coherent package, but it wasn't selected for funding.

> So do it again! I think this is the only way to succeed, there must
> be people dedicated to organizing a coherent development effort.

We did (see Paul's email).  We learned some lessons the first time
around, including that there are better programs in NASA than the one
we submitted to for this sort of thing.  However, both of us have had
workload increases since then, and supervising a software project
doesn't get you promoted or tenured in this business...unfortunately.
So that's why I turned to the list.

> > Barrett would release his class library!).  Perhaps this is a good
> > time to step back and ask the community a few questions about where it
> > wants Numerical Python to go.

> Wishes are one thing, but someone must actually do the work and/or
> provide the funding to get it done. Like many others, I'd be happy
> to contribute, but I just can't dedicate enough time to this
> to do major improvements on my own.

Precisely my point.  A few people working full time and in close
communication could do this job, but that won't happen without money.
On the other hand, there are several good examples (Debian, Gnome, the
Linux kernel) of mailing list collaborations that have pulled off
projects of this scale to good effect.  They have the advantage of
staying power -- no single person or group is critical to the
endeavor's success.  They have the disadvantage of the overhead of
communications and the "many cooks" syndrome.  Several people have
replied that they have small amounts of time to put into such a
project.  I don't think it's a critical mass yet, but I'm encouraged.
People are offering time first, rather than dumping tons of opinion on
how to lay out the CD (flame war to that effect just erupted on the
Beowulf/Extreme Linux lists).

I think that if around 20 people were interested in putting in some
real time (say, 100-200 hours over the next year), with testing and
help from others, we could do it.  Seeing the initial interest, I'll
take a semi-formal count in private email.  If you are interested in
doing some significant work other than just testing, please email me
saying so, and include the following snippet and answers:

Name:
Email:

Fields of professional/serious amateur technical experience:

Areas most interested in working on:

Really good at (X all that apply):
  Python programming
  technical writing (list languages)
  creating web pages
  programming numerical algorithms (list areas)
  programming graphics
  wrapping compiled code for Python
  C programming
  C++ programming
  Fortran programming
  Unix
  Windows
  MacOS
  other OS

Have access to the following hardware/OS combos for testing:

Rough number of hours/month available:

I will summarize responses, without names, to the list next Wednesday
(I'm gone for 11 days following then).

--jh--