Re: [Fsfe-uk] RFC: Free software project grants

[Alex Hudson]

On Fri, 2003-10-17 at 16:21, Andrew Savory wrote:
> >      1. who i am, what the project is and what my relation to the
> >         project is
> 
> I would add:
>        1.5 what my track record is

Actually, I would disagree - this would be part of the judgement call on
the project. 

Let's remember that all projects, even though they define an outcome,
may not be successful. There are many reasons why something may not
succeed: patent suit. Inability to get information from a hardware
vendor. Key developer run over by bus. Etc. etc. 

Each project is going to need to be assessed on the basis of how likely
it is to succeed. I guess you can sum this up, in general, as
'Potential' - this also goes to the excellent point Ian made about
whether or not this initial grant could stimulate further funding. The
potential of a project has to be considered, and in a way we don't
really want to always be making 'safe' bets: somewhat like investing in
stocks & shares (which is very much like what we're doing), we're taking
various levels of risk of various projects and probably want to hedge
our bets somewhat.

> I'd feel less comfortable giving large amounts of money to someone that's
> never written software before, or to someone with a record of failing to
> deliver.

I agree with that.

> > The most important decision, therefore, and probably the one which needs
> > most input, is what guidelines are used as the basis for judging a
> > project.
> 
> I'd also add "and who judges it?".

That's a separate issue - that's actually saying, "Who is best to judge
this?". As I said, the decision making will never be perfect: you may
have the ideal set of criteria, but quantifying the value of a project
again criteria is subjective. It's likely that any two groups are going
to come to reasonably similar decisions a lot of the time, though.
However, like the offside rule, it's the boundary cases which will cause
argument.

Each set of people is going to be subjective in different ways. I think
my preference would be to get some group of people to do it. I don't
think there is a particularly strong argument for any kind of voting
mechanism; I think the potential for bias is strong. At the moment, I
kind of like the idea of having a group of 10 people (for example) from
vastly different backgrounds drawn selectively from the (willing)
membership, and doing it a bit like the Booker Prize. But, if you have
better ideas, say so ;)

Cheers,

Alex.