Daniel Vainsencher wrote:
> Well, Python does it:
> 
> http://www.python.org/psf/grants/

Uhm, well I don't think this is a bragging point ;-) Looking at it I 
notice these grants were given out once (in Oct '04) where based on the 
period of the grant (12 months) it was clearly intended to be repeated. 
Why it wasn't repeated I'm not sure about but it may have something to 
do with the fact that the above page says for two of the three projects 
that they were still under development as of Jan '06 and only one was 
finished. These are volunteer communities after all.

> BTW, its quite possible that someone might get pissed off no matter how 
> you do it, but that's part of life. The question is doing it in a manner 
> that only upsets few people, and encourages active people. If we can 
> vote in a board, we can certainly award some funds.

Unless it affects upfront promises, yes, I think we can. For example, I 
could easily imagine the SqF awarding some money to further the 
development of traits, spoon or whatever else. What I could *not* 
imagine is any upfront promise that the result of that work will be the 
basis for any particular Squeak release. Unfortunately, there seems to 
be a tendency to think that way because otherwise the money is 
considered "wasted" not counting that the gain in knowledge may be more 
valuable than the artifact.

Cheers,
   - Andreas