Re: OPW; Where does the 500$ for each GSoC goes?

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

hi Michael;

On 16 September 2014 15:54, Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro gnome org> wrote:
> On Tue, 2014-09-16 at 13:18 +0100, Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> > that's not really a competitive salary for an experience developer,
> > since we're talking about improving the developer experience of the
> > platform. it may be barely enough for a part time developer, like it's
> > barely enough for a part time system administrator (we were very lucky
> > to have Andrea cover the role), but for a full time employee you're
> > ignoring the fact that a salary before taxes translates to at least
> > 1.5x to 2.5x the cost for the employer, depending on the geographical
> > location of the Foundation and of the employee. since the Foundation
> > is in the US, it would also imply a lot of administrative costs in
> > order to employ somebody who's not US based, and who may be able to
> > ask for less.
> >
> > in short: 40k dollars of Foundation money do not even remotely cover a
> > full time employee.
>
> I know you're living in an area of the US with a dramatically higher
> than usual cost of living and also higher than usual salaries,

I'm sure you're confusing me with somebody else. I don't live in the
US, I only work for a US company. I live in the UK.

> I'd also be concerned that the money would only be sufficient to hire
> one full-time developer, as opposed to several students, and it's not
> really encouraging to volunteer developers that the Foundation pays one
> particular developer. I'd rather direct it towards specific projects
> instead.

on that, I think we're strongly agreeing. :-)

> > we can also have public bids for working on specific areas of
> > interests — like we did for accessibility and privacy — and those bids
> > can be answered by companies and individuals. the issue, at that
> > point, becomes defining goals and deliverables, in order to award the
> > money.
>
> This is the approach I think would be more beneficial. The question is
> whether spending part or all of our OPW money on a particular contract
> project would or would not be more valuable to GNOME. I have no clue. I
> like it when students continue to contribute after the end of the
> project, though.

I think we should leave the OPW money where it's doing good things,
i.e. where it's right now.

we can, and should do more fund raising drives, and get more
commercial backing for those as well. this is not a zero sum game.

ciao,
 Emmanuele.


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