Challenges for universities for applying as mentor organization

[naraesk]

I'm a university associate and part of a research group which develops an open source software. So we thought it might be a good idea to take part in Google Summer of Code 2018, but our university leadership said no. Without their approval we are not allowed to register. I'd like to share their doubts:

• A professor is not a legal representative of the university, only the chanlellor is. Since the online application has to be done by a legal representative this is very complicate for us. This might be a bit oldschool but for us it would be much simpler if the application of the organization could be done via paper, so the chanceloor just have to sign the document. He knows how to sign documents!
• Google demands rights of use for the documents we create as part of this project. Therefore our lawyers are afraid the donatios from Google cannot be treated as sponsorship but as exchange of services with sales tax. They say the wording is very vague
• The role "organization administrators". They need full legal authority (=chancellor) but their task is also to watch the students progress according to the program rules. The university is not willing to give full legal authority to a professor because there is no way to oversee what he or she is doing in the name of the university. And the chancellorr is obviously not qualified to oversee the students progress. How did other universities handle this?
• US law in general. Our university has few expertise in us law and is afraid of us contracts accordings to US law. Because if there should be a conflict, they have to pay external lawyers.

Please note, I'm just repeating the doubts of our lawyers, especially the point with sales tax I don't really understand. Might be a german issue, I don't know.

On the one hand I'd like to know how other universities cope with this and maybe some Google people read this and are willing to adopt their program rules so they are less scary for (german?) universities. A european GSoC would be even better, but I guess it's not realistic.

cheers,

David

[Christopher Sean Morrison]

> I'm a university associate and part of a research group which develops an open source software. So we thought it might be a good idea to take part in Google Summer of Code 2018, but our university leadership said no. Without their approval we are not allowed to register.

Sounds to me like you need to decouple the open source software from the university, so they’re a participant in the community, not the controller.

> I'd like to share their doubts:
> • A professor is not a legal representative of the university, only the chanlellor is. Since the online application has to be done by a legal representative this is very complicate for us. This might be a bit oldschool but for us it would be much simpler if the application of the organization could be done via paper, so the chanceloor just have to sign the document. He knows how to sign documents!

They could just as well be given a link to the website to sign. Modern times. Save a tree.

> • Google demands rights of use for the documents we create as part of this project. Therefore our lawyers are afraid the donatios from Google cannot be treated as sponsorship but as exchange of services with sales tax. They say the wording is very vague

You can reject the donation, problem solved. The point is to attract new open source contributors.

> A european GSoC would be even better, but I guess it's not realistic.

It may not run this year, but the European Space Agency (ESA) Summer of Code in Space (SOCIS) program has been around for a number of years for open source projects that align with their mission.

Cheers!
Sean

[Joel Sherrill]

RTEMS has done the ESA SOCIS multiple times. It is modeled after GSoC with an organization administrator. I don't remember the details of the application process but there was an application with questions similar to those on the GSoC organization application and some terms to agree with. It is quite possible your university wouldn't like those either.

I have no idea what the student participants have to agree to. But the payment process is more complicated than with anything run by the Google OSPO. ESA has a contractor run the program and make payments and that means ESA contracting regulations come into play. There is no donation to the organization. There is also usually 1 student and no more than 2 per organization.

Honestly, the Google OSPO deserves a lot of credit for running GSoC and GCI in such an efficient manner that (from my perspective as an organization admin) is really easy to deal with.

That doesn't make your university's lawyers happy but as Sean pointed out, separating the open source project from the university may be worth looking at. I know both our projects started with organizations that can be cumbersome to deal with.

--joel

 

Cheers!
Sean

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