Call for Grant Proposals

[Aahz]

Speaking as a PSF member who is or has been on some of the operating
committees, but not a member of the PSF board or the grant committee:

In article <410ef314$1 at news.unimelb.edu.au>,
Maurice LING  <mauriceling at acm.org> wrote:
>
>2. Will there be any form of intellectual property claims, including, 
>copyrights, trade marks, patents, on any form of work generated from the 
>PSF Grant by the Python Software Foundation (PSF) or any of its 
>associates? If so, what are the precise nature of it? This is important 
>as it may injure the research work and subsequently, the resultant 
>thesis and publications directing towards the award of my degree.

There will be no claims by the PSF itself unless you assign your work;
that follows more-or-less from choosing projects that are are Open
Source.

>3. On the website (http://www.python.org/psf/call-2004.html), it is 
>stated that the project of which the grant is granted for must be 
>completed by October 30, 2005. In event of failure to meet, what will be 
>the penalities?
>
>4. From Question 3, what constitutes partial failure or complete failure 
>of the project?

We don't know.  We're feeling our way into this.  I suspect people would
rather take a wait-and-see attitude until we actually have to deal with
these issues.

>5. From Question 4, it is stated on the website 
>(http://www.python.org/psf/call-2004.html) that a delivery plan is 
>essential in the proposal. How will delay in delivery affect the payment 
>plan and the grant on the whole?

We're talking about US$40K in grants total; I expect that grants will
simply be issued up-front for the most part.  (The PSF's total monetary
resources right now are around US$115K.)  I'd expect that if a grant
proposal ties payments to delivery targets, the penalty for missing
delivery will be delay of the next grant payment.

We're putting a certain amount of formalism into this because we have
to; however, you'll be much better off if you think of this as "Python
community money" that's being spread around to grease projects that are
having trouble getting traction.  There are basically two and only two
criteria that really matter:

* Will this project benefit a large portion of the Python community?

* Will giving money to this project move it forward?

Instead of asking general questions like this, why don't you simply tell
us what your proposal is, and we'll help you refine it before you send
it in to the grant committee?
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

"To me vi is Zen.  To use vi is to practice zen.  Every command is a
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