All,

I thought I ask Sir David Ascher about the python grant program, here is his
reply:

As to an original question re: why it wasn't repeated, the primary reason is
fatigue on behalf of the people responsible for reviewing the grant
proposals.  It was a lot of work, especially the first time.
 
We're still planning on doing it again, although likely with different
parameters.
 
FWIW, I think the membership of the PSF tends to thinks it was a successful
program, and most want us to repeat it.
 
--david

I think that we should keep an open mind.  There is a lot that we could do
to help the community, this is only one idea, but in general I like the idea
of building tools, supporting the infrastructure and release process,
running events like code sprints and such.

Ron Teitelbaum

> -----Original Message-----
> From: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev-
> bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Andreas Raab
> Sent: Saturday, August 19, 2006 8:15 PM
> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> Subject: Re: Stef's departure from the SqueakFoundation board
> 
> 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
>