Urgent: GSoC Mentor Tasks. You have something to do by this weekend!

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Jason Moore

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Mar 12, 2015, 12:58:09 AM3/12/15
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Angadh, Gilbert, Tarun, Sachin, Jim, Ondrej, and I have all agreed to be mentors for PyDy related projects.

See this latest blog post for info on how to get started as mentor:

http://www.pydy.org/blog/2015/gsoc-announcement.html

Make your Melange profile and connect with umbrella orgs ASAP.

The student application period opens March 16th. We need to take care of some logistics before then. So I'm going to assign tasks to the potential mentors below:

- [Gilbert] Create a PyDy github wiki page for students to explain the process, especially how to submit to multiple orgs. This can be modeled after SymPy and PSF's pages.
- [Angadh] Create an application template on the wiki with instructions (can be copied from sympy and edited to suite).
- [Jim] Draft solicitation email and private list (maybe google sheet) of people in universities we can send to (profs, grad students, post docs, etc). This needs to go out ASAP. Check with other mentors for names/email addresses.
- [Sachin] Register us for NumFOCUS as a project.
- [Tarun] Help Sahil get the new theme up to snuff for the website.
- [Jason] Update our info with NumFOCUS and clean up there ideas page to be more like PSF's.
- [All] Answer student inquires on the mailing list and gitter.
- [All] Provide names and contact info to Jim.

If we want to get plenty of good applications this year, we need to put in the upfront effort. Let me know if you have questions or can't get this done. Everything should be done by this weekend if possible.

Jason Moore

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Mar 12, 2015, 3:33:15 PM3/12/15
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Angadh just informed me that he's no longer going to mentor due to him needing to finish his dissertation this summer. So I'm going to give his task to Gilbert as they are related and relatively small.

Jason Moore

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Mar 17, 2015, 3:34:11 PM3/17/15
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I'd like to say thanks to everyone that helped get these tasks done for th GSoC preparation:

- We now have a nice looking website [1].
- We now have student instructions [2] and an application template [3].
- An email has been sent out to 30+ profs, leaders, etc. Please continue to share broadly.
- The NumFOCUS GSoC site [4] has been made more generic and students can submit SymPy oriented projects there in addition to the PSF.

We still need to sign up as an official NumFOCUS org. Can someone volunteer for that, as I haven't heard from Sachin?


On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 9:57 PM, Jason Moore <moore...@gmail.com> wrote:

James Crist

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Mar 17, 2015, 3:53:33 PM3/17/15
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I'll sign us up as a NumFOCUS org.

- Jim

Jason Moore

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Mar 17, 2015, 3:58:11 PM3/17/15
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Thanks Jim!


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James Crist

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Mar 17, 2015, 4:46:30 PM3/17/15
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So, this looks a little more complicated than just saying "hey, we'd like to be part of NumFOCUS". Things we need to do (I think):

1. Decide on a fiscal model?

I'm unsure, the "join as a project" form makes it look like we're applying for a one time grant, but the rest of the website talks about sponsorship models. And some projects are listed under sponsored, and some not. If we need to chose (I think we do), we need to pick between "Grantor-Grantee", and "Comprehensive". From what I understand, the difference is who takes ownership for the project. In Comprehensive, NumFOCUS takes full legal and fiscal ownership for the project, while in Grantor-Grantee we'd have to manage our taxes, but would maintain fiscal/legal ownership of the project. I think.

There's a lot of legal words in the description, perhaps people should read the stuff themselves: http://numfocus.org/projects/join-as-project.html. This FAQ may also be useful: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zdXp07dLvkbqBrDsw96P6mkqxnWzKJuM-1f4408I6Qs/edit?usp=sharing

2. It looks like NumFOCUS is mostly for fiscal/legal support. Do we really need this as an org? We don't generate any revenue (AFAIK), so what would joining get us? I feel like as an org we may be too small/new to really need such support.

Any feedback on these questions would be nice.

Thanks,
- Jim

Jason Moore

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Mar 17, 2015, 4:50:21 PM3/17/15
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SymPy is fiscally sponsored. NumFOCUS handles all of the SymPy's money and donations. We are part of SymPy and use SymPy funds occasionally. We've just moved our domain dns hosting to NumFOCUS. So they are currently paying our bill with SymPy money. We should probably just ask NumFOCUS if we can be a "wing" of SymPy just to make it a little more official. Maybe just email them and explain our relationship with SymPy and that we'd like to be officially recognized somehow. We don't have any need for dealing with money yet as SymPy is taking care of that for us.

Aaron Meurer

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Mar 17, 2015, 4:53:04 PM3/17/15
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I recommend bringing up these questions on the numfocus mailing list
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/numfocus. They'll give you
much better answers, but my basic understand is:

- There are other advantages to being under NumFOCUS than just fiscal
support (e.g., legal support, like if someone were to sue you guys
over some patent infringement in your code).

- If you ever foresee yourselves receiving any nontrivial amount of
money, fiscal support is important. The reason is that NumFOCUS is a
nonprofit, so the money would be tax free. If you received it
personally (say, if Jason just put it in a bank account), it would be
taxed as income. SymPy lost a decent chunk of money the first year we
did GSoC to taxes because we weren't under GSoC yet.

Aaron Meurer

Sachin Joglekar

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Mar 18, 2015, 5:31:24 AM3/18/15
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I had mailed NumFOCUS and they sent me a mail asking me to send a PR with PyDy added at the README, Ideas Pages and Mentors pages. I'll send the PR in some time and mention the links here.

Cheers!

Sachin Joglekar

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Mar 18, 2015, 5:47:28 AM3/18/15
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Heres the PR link: https://github.com/numfocus/gsoc/pull/29.
@Tarun, please check if your Melange ID is correct.


On Thursday, March 12, 2015 at 10:28:09 AM UTC+5:30, moorepants wrote:

TARUN GABA

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Mar 18, 2015, 6:21:49 AM3/18/15
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Yes Sachin,
 My Melange ID is correct in the PR.

 - Tarun

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James Crist

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Mar 18, 2015, 9:26:12 AM3/18/15
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@Sachin: I think Jason meant register for us as a project with NumFOCUS, not as a GSoC project. http://numfocus.org/projects/join-as-project.html

Jason Moore

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Mar 18, 2015, 12:15:59 PM3/18/15
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Yes Jim, I did not mean to ask to be under the GSoC NumFOCUS org. PyDy is not a NumFOCUS organization yet so we don't really have any right to be a GSoC NumFOCUS suborg. The application process that Jim has started with NumFOCUS would be one step to making that happen but it will not likely happen for this year.

SymPy is a fiscally sponsored NumFOCUS org and half our code is in SymPy. It is possible that a student applies to SymPy to work on mechanics related code and be funded under under the GSoC NumFOCUS if their application is good enough.

And just to be clear. I spent a lot of effort just to get SymPy in with NumFOCUS and I personally didn't think it appropriate to ask for PyDy too because we aren't actually an NumFOCUS sponsored org.

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