[Numpy-discussion] Tidelift

[Stefan van der Walt]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2018 16:54:16 -0500, Andy Ray Terrel wrote:
> 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 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".