sage foundation ???

[Frédéric Chapoton]

Hello,

Apparently, people can "donate to the SAGE foundation" using this link : https://www.washington.edu/giving/make-a-gift/?page=make&Code=MATSAG

which is advertised here : http://www.sagemath.org/development-ack.html

Who is in charge ? How much money is collected (I would guess almost nothing) ? How does this benefit to sage ?

See also our wiki page https://wiki.sagemath.org/Foundation

Could please people in charge of that foundation update the wiki page ?

Frederic

[William Stein]

Sure but before I do that, are there any other questions people can think of?

Frederic

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[Dima Pasechnik]

On Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 11:42 AM William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 21, 2018, 1:07 AM Frédéric Chapoton <fchap...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Apparently, people can "donate to the SAGE foundation" using this link : https://www.washington.edu/giving/make-a-gift/?page=make&Code=MATSAG
>>
>> which is advertised here : http://www.sagemath.org/development-ack.html
>>
>> Who is in charge ? How much money is collected (I would guess almost nothing) ? How does this benefit to sage ?
>>
>> See also our wiki page https://wiki.sagemath.org/Foundation
>>
>> Could please people in charge of that foundation update the wiki page ?
>
>
>
> Sure but before I do that, are there any other questions people can think of?

In case it is easy/convenient, having information about amounts
received and spent would be
great (not sure whether it should be public, I've no idea how the
corresponding laws
in US function).

Similar foundations, e.g. the one of Oberwolfach Institute, publish
their annual finance reports.

[Volker Braun]

Afair the Sage foundation is a US non-profit with the necessary accounting busywork graciously provided by UW; So I'm sure there is similar reporting thats either published or available to the public. Though I've never read the Oberwolfach financial report ;-)

[Dima Pasechnik]

On Sat, Sep 22, 2018 at 11:21 AM Volker Braun <vbrau...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Afair the Sage foundation is a US non-profit with the necessary accounting busywork graciously provided by UW; So I'm sure there is similar reporting thats either published or available to the public.

> Though I've never read the Oberwolfach financial report ;-)

maybe I was wrong. As a member of their "Förderverein" I do get annual
reports (no idea whether they are confidential)...

>
>
> On Friday, September 21, 2018 at 1:18:53 PM UTC+2, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
>>
>> Similar foundations, e.g. the one of Oberwolfach Institute, publish
>> their annual finance reports.
>

[William Stein]

On Sat, Sep 22, 2018 at 3:45 AM, Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 22, 2018 at 11:21 AM Volker Braun <vbrau...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Afair the Sage foundation is a US non-profit with the necessary accounting busywork graciously provided by UW; So I'm sure there is similar reporting thats either published or available to the public.
>

Let me try a rough attempt at answering some of the questions in this
thread. Please ask followup questions or let me know if this is
helpful. We could then add some version of this to the sagemath.org
website.

More precisely the "Sage Foundation" is really just the name of a
donation account (a budget number) at University of Washington. That's
it. UW itself is some sort of not-for-profit (though not a 501(c)3),
so when people donate they can get a tax deduction.

For the last few years, the main purpose of the Sage foundation has been:

- accept donations from an anonymous retired person and a Microsoft
Research to fund "Women in Sage" workshops,
- accept a couple of small "random" donations, which for a couple of
years have gone entirely to funding "The Sage booth" at math
conferences (e.g., JMM and Mathfest), where a couple of us talk to
hundreds of people who stream by. These donations are often on the
order of a total of $50-$100/month, but it adds up, and sometimes
there is occasionally more.

One very nice aspect of this arrangement is that Univ of Washington
does not charge anything at all for
operating this account. So when somebody donates $50, we get to fully
spend that $50. E.g., when there
is a women in sage workshop, there's a ton of paperwork by UW involved
in reimbursing everybody, and this
is just done for free.

Another possibly relevant data point (in case I were to leave UW) is
probably the Chair of the UW math department
right now is John Palmieri, who is also a Sage developer.

-- William

>> Though I've never read the Oberwolfach financial report ;-)
> maybe I was wrong. As a member of their "Förderverein" I do get annual
> reports (no idea whether they are confidential)...
>
>>
>>
>> On Friday, September 21, 2018 at 1:18:53 PM UTC+2, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
>>>
>>> Similar foundations, e.g. the one of Oberwolfach Institute, publish
>>> their annual finance reports.
>>
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--
William (http://wstein.org)

[John H Palmieri]

Yes, and we're happy to accept donations in any amount, to the Sage foundation fund or to any of a number of other funds, if you want to support other efforts of the UW math department. (I can give you a prioritized list, if you're interested :) And as chair of the department, I am in charge of the funds, to answer Frédéric's question, and note that I am legally bound to use them according to the fund's description and in ways that are appropriate for a not-for-profit institution. (I am not in my office now, so I can't look up the description right now, but it probably just says "To support the development of the mathematical software system SAGE," as it does on the donation page.) Also, I would defer to William about how to use it (since he is one of our faculty members, and the department set up the fund to help his work on Sage); I do not plan to use it without asking him, and if he has a valid use for it, I would approve it.

As far as I know, there are no published reports of how the funds are used. This is not because it is secret – legally, I think the use of the funds should be public knowledge – but rather because there are so many of them. Our department might have 50 different funds to which people can donate (various scholarship funds for undergraduates, fellowship funds for graduates, funds for endowed professorships, general purpose funds, highly specialized funds, and multiples of each of these types), and if you extrapolate to the rest of the university and imagine publishing a report for each one, it gets out of control very quickly. If William's answer is not good enough, I can ask our departmental administrator for all of the recent uses of the Sage foundation money.

  John

[Dima Pasechnik]

IMHO it's better for a potential donor to see more info on how the
money is spent, with the list of events/tasks on what the donations
are spent. An Sage project outsider won't have a clue, and might have
a feeling it goes into a sinkhole rather than into well-specified
meaningful activities.

[William Stein]

On Sat, Sep 22, 2018 at 11:21 AM, Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:
> IMHO it's better for a potential donor to see more info on how the
> money is spent, with the list of events/tasks on what the donations
> are spent. An Sage project outsider won't have a clue, and might have
> a feeling it goes into a sinkhole rather than into well-specified
> meaningful activities.

To further support your point, the people who donated nontrivial
amounts all contacted me
and discussed very specifically how it would be used. As an example, Microsoft
Research really wants to encourage women, so they specifically asked that their
donation be used to supplement funding women in Sage workshops.

[John H Palmieri]

That's what this discussion and the wiki page are for, right? Are you suggesting or asking for something else?

   John

[rjf]

I assume that other research universities work about the same as at UC

Berkeley.  Anyone can donate money to a professor's research activities

with a designation something like "to support Prof X's research in the

area of ABC".  It is monitored by the university, but such "various donors"

funds are typically more flexible than (say) money from a federal

contract, where budget categories like "hardware" and "travel" may

be more rigidly defined.  Perhaps the concept here is mostly an

alternative name for

"The various donors fund of Prof William Stein, for research in some field of mutual interest"

There are subtle aspects of donations that may raise flags regarding IRS treatment

of gifts, and conflicts of interest when it may appear that money

donated to UW is in some way diverted to benefit private enterprises.

The existence of Cocalc may be a complication which I hope

people have thought about.

RJF

[kcrisman]

On Sunday, September 23, 2018 at 1:18:50 AM UTC-4, rjf wrote:

I assume that other research universities work about the same as at UC

Berkeley.  Anyone can donate money to a professor's research activities

with a designation something like "to support Prof X's research in the

area of ABC".  It is monitored by the university, but such "various donors"

funds are typically more flexible than (say) money from a federal

contract, where budget categories like "hardware" and "travel" may

be more rigidly defined.  Perhaps the concept here is mostly an

alternative name for

"The various donors fund of Prof William Stein, for research in some field of mutual interest"

As far as I can tell things have always been used specifically for Sage-specific activities.  Now that CoCalc is essentially doing the Sage booth, perhaps it would not be appropriate to use Sage Foundation funds to fund that booth, but in the past that was a very appropriate use (if I understand the nature of the current booth correctly, which I may not).  Certainly sponsoring various Sage development activities such as Women in Sage or perhaps others sounds great.  I don't know that it is as vague here as "some field of mutual interest".

For reference to newcomers, in the past there was discussion of setting up a "proper" Sage Foundation under US (or other) nonprofit law but William and others looked into the amount of work and/or likelihood of approval and deemed it to be insurmountable.   Certainly R and probably other similar mathematical FLOSS does have foundations (even the OEIS!) but I don't know whether they are in different situations.  If anyone knows folks from one of these and would be interested in reviving that discussion that would be great, but keep in mind that the accounting issues are a significant administrative burden to *someone*.  If we thought donations might significantly increase with a different model that might be worth looking into.

[William Stein]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 6:12 AM, kcrisman <kcri...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sunday, September 23, 2018 at 1:18:50 AM UTC-4, rjf wrote:
>>
>> I assume that other research universities work about the same as at UC
>> Berkeley. Anyone can donate money to a professor's research activities
>> with a designation something like "to support Prof X's research in the
>> area of ABC". It is monitored by the university, but such "various
>> donors"
>> funds are typically more flexible than (say) money from a federal
>> contract, where budget categories like "hardware" and "travel" may
>> be more rigidly defined. Perhaps the concept here is mostly an
>> alternative name for
>> "The various donors fund of Prof William Stein, for research in some field
>> of mutual interest"
>>>>
>>>>
>
> As far as I can tell things have always been used specifically for
> Sage-specific activities. Now that CoCalc is essentially doing the Sage
> booth, perhaps it would not be appropriate to use Sage Foundation funds to
> fund that booth, but in the past that was a very appropriate use (if I
> understand the nature of the current booth correctly, which I may not).

The booth tends to be about three things:

- Sage
- CoCalc
- the Univ of Washington math grad program

See attached picture from the last booth, which has the CoCalc and Sage banners.
People come by and often talk with us about Sage, get Sage stickers, etc.
Prospective grad students often start asking me about UW.
Of course people also talk with us about CoCalc too.

Nobody is paid from Sage Foundation money to be at the booth -- Sage foundation
just pays for some travel expenses and the booth rental. If you
genuinely think it would be
better for Sage for us to not have the booth at all, let me know, and
I'll consider
cancelling it, since it's a lot of work to travel and be exhausted day
after day by
questions...

> For reference to newcomers, in the past there was discussion of setting up a

> "proper" Sage Foundation under US (or other) nonprofit law but William ...

More specifically, two years ago, I talked with a competent lawyer who
advised me that setting up a not-for-profit for a software project
is a complete nonstarter with the IRS these days. That wasn't the
case in the past,
but it was in 2016. I'm personally not going to pursue this further.
If somebody
else wants to, the community will I hope be supportive of their effort.

RJF:

>> The existence of Cocalc may be a complication which I hope
people have thought about.

Yes, what you hope happened has happened.

-- William

[Erik Bray]

I would suggest, rather, seeing about applying for Sage to join the
NumFocus organization: https://numfocus.org/

That always seemed the obvious thing to me, but maybe I'm missing
something. However, once I did learn that the Sage Foundation is a
thing that exists, it seemed at least less necessary since we were
already getting that kind of support from UW. But if we ever lose
that, that would seem the way to go. And I believe there has been an
effort started recently to establish a NumFocus organization in Europe
as well, IIRC.

[Dima Pasechnik]

I think joining NumFocus is a good idea.

[William Stein]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 7:20 AM, Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think joining NumFocus is a good idea.

+1 and it doesn't preclude people/companies still donating to
something at UW if they want to...

William

--
William (http://wstein.org)

[Dima Pasechnik]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 3:40 PM William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 7:20 AM, Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think joining NumFocus is a good idea.
>
> +1 and it doesn't preclude people/companies still donating to
> something at UW if they want to...

there are formal things needed here: (cf.
https://numfocus.org/information-fiscal-sponsorship)

What are the requirements to become a Fiscally Sponsored Project of NumFOCUS?

A Fiscally Sponsored Project must further the NumFOCUS mission and:

1) Release its code under an OSI approved open source license
(exceptions must be approved by the NumFOCUS Board of Directors)
2) Have a Code of Conduct, either adopted from our own or similar in spirit.
3) Have a community that is active and of reasonable size
4) Have multiple people willing to sign the Fiscal Sponsorship
Agreement (5 signatories for a comprehensive FSA; 3 signatories for a
grantor-grantee FSA). Those people must be active in the project; one
person may be an external stakeholder instead of a project
contributor.
5) Have a leadership body or team consisting of at least 3 people;
these people should not be employed by the same entity or share a
common affiliation beyond that of the project.

1, 3, 4 is there or very easy to set up. 5 should not be too hard either.
Perhaps the most tricky is 2 (or perhaps not anymore, after out
infamous CoC discussion fiasco we could agree it makes sense to get
something in place; we can have a look at
https://numfocus.org/code-of-conduct
and see if we can just agree to this)

Dima

[William Stein]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 9:00 AM, Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:

> 1, 3, 4 is there or very easy to set up. 5 should not be too hard either.
> Perhaps the most tricky is 2 (or perhaps not anymore, after out
> infamous CoC discussion fiasco we could agree it makes sense to get
> something in place; we can have a look at
> https://numfocus.org/code-of-conduct
> and see if we can just agree to this)

Believe it or not, we have an official code of conduct:

https://wiki.sagemath.org/Community

It's the first hit if I google

sagemath code of conduct


--
William (http://wstein.org)

[Erik Bray]

2), incidentally, is something I was planning to work on this very
week as soon as I get some high priority tickets for Sage itself done.

By "work on" I mainly mean preparing a pull request to the
sagemath.org website to add the existing CoC to the website someplace
easier to find, and not as messy as the wiki page William points to
(see also my most recent thread on sage-flame).

I was going to suggest, in the process of making that PR, it would be
a good time to re-evaluate and see if there is anything we would like
to update before committing it to the sagemath.org website.

[Erik Bray]

5) also might be harder than you think--or at least, even if we can
come up with an uncontroversial list of names, it's a discussion that
invites questions about project governance. It might be interesting
to follow the recent discussions about Python governance with the BDFL
stepping down.

[Dima Pasechnik]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 5:11 PM William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 9:00 AM, Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 1, 3, 4 is there or very easy to set up. 5 should not be too hard either.
> > Perhaps the most tricky is 2 (or perhaps not anymore, after out
> > infamous CoC discussion fiasco we could agree it makes sense to get
> > something in place; we can have a look at
> > https://numfocus.org/code-of-conduct
> > and see if we can just agree to this)
>
> Believe it or not, we have an official code of conduct:
>
> https://wiki.sagemath.org/Community

if I read on there I see it's merely a summary of the discussion, no?
IIRC there wasn't a conclusive vote in favour of a CoC --- but I might
be wrong...

>
> It's the first hit if I google
>
> sagemath code of conduct
>
>
> --
> William (http://wstein.org)
>

[Erik Bray]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 6:39 PM Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 5:11 PM William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 9:00 AM, Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > 1, 3, 4 is there or very easy to set up. 5 should not be too hard either.
> > > Perhaps the most tricky is 2 (or perhaps not anymore, after out
> > > infamous CoC discussion fiasco we could agree it makes sense to get
> > > something in place; we can have a look at
> > > https://numfocus.org/code-of-conduct
> > > and see if we can just agree to this)
> >
> > Believe it or not, we have an official code of conduct:
> >
> > https://wiki.sagemath.org/Community
>
> if I read on there I see it's merely a summary of the discussion, no?
> IIRC there wasn't a conclusive vote in favour of a CoC --- but I might
> be wrong...

There was a conclusive vote, or at least conclusive as there was ever
going to be, and it was majority (of those who voted) in favor.
However, the way that page is structured does not make that
immediately clear and evident, as there is all sorts of other
"discussion" on it (which should probably be in the talk page). Also
having it on a wiki page which anyone with an account can edit kind of
robs it of credibility.

[Dima Pasechnik]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 5:53 PM Erik Bray <erik....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 6:39 PM Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 5:11 PM William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 9:00 AM, Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > 1, 3, 4 is there or very easy to set up. 5 should not be too hard either.
> > > > Perhaps the most tricky is 2 (or perhaps not anymore, after out
> > > > infamous CoC discussion fiasco we could agree it makes sense to get
> > > > something in place; we can have a look at
> > > > https://numfocus.org/code-of-conduct
> > > > and see if we can just agree to this)
> > >
> > > Believe it or not, we have an official code of conduct:
> > >
> > > https://wiki.sagemath.org/Community
> >
> > if I read on there I see it's merely a summary of the discussion, no?
> > IIRC there wasn't a conclusive vote in favour of a CoC --- but I might
> > be wrong...
>
> There was a conclusive vote, or at least conclusive as there was ever
> going to be, and it was majority (of those who voted) in favor.

Right, see here (Nov 2014):
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sage-devel/dR3_eyIUyac/LyALpiLcHuQJ

What happened then was quite, hmm, heavy:

"The "code of conduct" is getting out of hand - please stop for 2 weeks."
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sage-devel/-jHyUXFY1Zw/usW_QNIltjAJ

> However, the way that page is structured does not make that
> immediately clear and evident, as there is all sorts of other
> "discussion" on it (which should probably be in the talk page). Also
> having it on a wiki page which anyone with an account can edit kind of
> robs it of credibility.

Indeed.

[William Stein]

On Mon, Sep 24, 2018 at 9:35 AM, Erik Bray <erik....@gmail.com> wrote:
> 5) also might be harder than you think--or at least, even if we can
> come up with an uncontroversial list of names, it's a discussion that
> invites questions about project governance.

To make it easier, I would suggest that the three names are for the
people specifically interested
in managing things related to the donations under NumFocus, and that's
the extent of
their roles. So -- to keep this easier -- they aren't **the triad of
sages in charge of Sage forever**,
they are just in charge of this particular money.

I personally would nominate the following three people: Erik, Dima, Frédéric

Why? They are the three in this thread who are most interested in
volunteering time to work on this,
and they all are clearly longterm serious Sage developers with
excellent reputations in the community.

-- William

--
William (http://wstein.org)

[kcrisman]

The booth tends to be about three things:

  - Sage
  - CoCalc
  - the Univ of Washington math grad program

See attached picture from the last booth, which has the CoCalc and Sage banners.
People come by and often talk with us about Sage, get Sage stickers, etc.
Prospective grad students often start asking me about UW.
Of course people also talk with us about CoCalc too.

Nobody is paid from Sage Foundation money to be at the booth -- Sage foundation
just pays for some travel expenses and the booth rental.  If you
genuinely think it would be
better for Sage for us to not have the booth at all, let me know, and
I'll consider
cancelling it, since it's a lot of work to travel and be exhausted day
after day by
questions...

The booth is a great idea, as you personally know I feel but perhaps others may not.  I just think (though I'm no accountant) there should be a way to check off a box saying enough Sage-only (or UW?) activity happened to justify using those funds for that purpose.   And of course donor intent in such a situation is (or should be) important, so as long as the donors know the booth is multi-purpose then probably it should be okay (and based on my personal experience, your donors usually are well-informed about these things).

As a practical matter, maybe the banners could both be hung up in the higher position?  I do recall the title in the program at least one year being Sage and CoCalc, which would seem to respect the dual nature of the booth.  Sorry I haven't been able to help more recently.

[William Stein]

I'm sure you mean the best.   But, are you really serious about imposing a list of arbitrary rules on how I spend a week of my life running a booth about Sage and CoCalc at math meetings?    If this is something that reflects the general opinion of the community, then I should just stop running the booth (after having done it over 10 times now).  

[kcrisman]

As a practical matter, maybe the banners could both be hung up in the higher position?  I do recall the title in the program at least one year being Sage and CoCalc, which would seem to respect the dual nature of the booth.  Sorry I haven't been able to help more recently.

I'm sure you mean the best.   But, are you really serious about imposing a list of arbitrary rules on how I spend a week of my life running a booth about Sage and CoCalc at math meetings?    If this is something that reflects the general opinion of the community, then I should just stop running the booth (after having done it over 10 times now).  

I'm not imposing anything, just voicing an opinion.  It didn't seem like an arbitrary list to me, but given that no one else is voicing this same opinion and given the open character of this community, as you point out, I'm happy to assume my opinion is in error here.  I want to reiterate that the booth is probably one of the best outreach possibilities Sage has had over the years - especially with maintaining community; people who are never seen on one of the email lists are very proud to pick up their stickers and identify with quality open source math software, and to tell people to get help there.  I'm very grateful for those who have been stepping up to help you as others (such as myself) have had to step back, and obviously thankful that you've seen the value of it over all these years.

[Erik Bray]

I'm honored by the nomination, but I do not think I would be a good
choice. Although I am personally dedicated to and interested in Sage,
I'm sort of a mercenary right now and do not (currently) have any kind
of long-term institutional backing of the sort that tends to lend
credibility.

However, I am perfectly happy (and have long thought it would be a
good idea) to help draft a proposal to join NumFocus, and I have a few
connections to both NumFocus itself, and other member projects
(reminder: I worked for a long time as release manager for Astropy,
which was actually one of the earliest NumFocus member projects after
IPython).

[Jeroen Demeyer]

On 2018-09-24 18:00, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
> Perhaps the most tricky is 2 (or perhaps not anymore, after out
> infamous CoC discussion fiasco we could agree it makes sense to get
> something in place; we can have a look at
> https://numfocus.org/code-of-conduct
> and see if we can just agree to this)

Speaking of Code of Conducts, there has recently been a CoC incident in
the Python community where somebody was banned permanently after a
single controversial post on a mailing list [1].

Personally, I think that this is huge overreaction (at most a warning or
a temporary ban would have been in order) and it shows that a CoC can be
used as an excuse to take such actions. That incident certainly makes me
less supportive of having a CoC.

[1]
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2018-September/053602.html

[Dima Pasechnik]

TLDR: Someone proposes to remove "ugly vs beautiful" wording from
https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/,
resulting (unsurprisingly) in an escalating shouting contest...
How can I unsee this, please (I could have done something useful in
the lost 30 min...)

[William Stein]

I didn't look. But if something like that happened on sage-devel,
somebody else would email sage-...@googlegroups.com (as it says to
do in our CoC), then we would look at it, probably delete some
messages from sage-devel (?), and definitely tell the person to take
it to sage-flame, where there is no code of conduct, and they can
shout into the void. If they were OK with that resolution, I think
that would be fine. If they continued posting what is generally
considered flame bait to sage-devel *after being told to use
sage-flame*, we would definitely have to ban them from sage-devel for
the good of the community.

[Erik Bray]

FWIW the message in question was really bad IMO, and CoC or no CoC had
I been a moderator of the python-ideas mailing list I would have taken
similar actions. That said, they did violate the Python CoC on at
least three counts within one message, so the CoC definitely validated
its existence in that case.

Also if I recall the poster in question has been a problem in the past
and has received warnings, though I *might* be confusing them with
someone else, so don't take my word for it. The PSF has a CoC working
group, which I believe is also that which decides what to do with
complaints (which are I understand are relatively rare), and its
membership is public information:
https://www.python.org/psf/committees/#code-of-conduct-work-group If
a majority of the WG decided that this was a serious enough issue that
they didn't want that person participating in that space
(python-ideas) I think that carries some weight (especially
considering that we don't know the full context, such as the volume of
complaints about that post, that poster's past history, etc...)

The CoC is being "used" here only to guide evaluation of the issue at
hand. It's not being used to decide how to take action--you'll note
that the PSF CoC [1] does not make specific prescriptions on how to
handle incidents, and leaves that up to maintainers of the spaces in
which the CoC applies, (mailing lists, conferences, etc.) to determine
how best to implement the working group's recommendations. I think
within that, as a superset of the CoC, the moderators of python-ideas
specifically have their own process and I know in the past have talked
about formalizing that process and making it more transparent. But
either way there are judgment calls to be made, and both Sage and
Python are fortunate that such incidents are rare enough that we can
usually take the time to evaluate the best course of action in each
case individually without having to appeal with some inflexible set of
laws (which a CoC is not).

[1] https://www.python.org/psf/codeofconduct/

[Dima Pasechnik]

I think the whole thread there basically started with a flame-bait. The next logical step would be to propose to ban talking about bad code as bad, etc etc.

In particular given the totally opposite to English ways to communicate in Dutch (way, way, way more direct), no wonder a native Dutch speaker took the bait (as he freely admitted).

I have no clue why moderators sat on their hands for so long.

But we digress. 

[William Stein]

On Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 1:07 AM, Frédéric Chapoton <fchap...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Apparently, people can "donate to the SAGE foundation" using this link :
> https://www.washington.edu/giving/make-a-gift/?page=make&Code=MATSAG
> Who is in charge ? How much money is collected (I would guess almost
> nothing) ?

Our math department sends monthly statements that I have to sign off
on, and I just got one a few minutes ago. The grand total donated to
the Sage Foundation for the last 6 months is $0, i.e., there were no
donations at all in the last 6 months. (Obviously, THANK YOU to
people who have donated in the past.)

In any case, if anybody tries to setup something with NumFocus, having
the time, energy, and interest to do actual fundraising -- i.e.,
getting people to donate -- will be important. It's not like there is
a steady stream of donations pouring in to support open source math
software, with nowhere to go.

- -William

[Harald Schilly]

On Monday, September 24, 2018 at 3:12:12 PM UTC+2, kcrisman wrote:

 Certainly R and probably other similar mathematical FLOSS does have foundations...

I just came across this thread. Many years ago I had the idea to setup an european "sage foundation" similar to the one of R. My main thoughts where that this gives european users a way to organize us over here, while the UW parent foundation works well for the US. The R foundation [1] is situated in Vienna, Austria (incidentally where I live :-) and it's absolutely not not a bureaucratic hassle to set up a nonprofit organization like that over here. The real challenge is to find a couple of people who stick together and run it (a dedicated core team). Going with NumFocus sounds like a good idea, but it's also an US entity.

-- harald

[1] https://www.r-project.org/foundation/

[Erik Bray]

I believe I've heard--unless I'm misremembering something else--that
there is some interest in setting up a European-based NumFOCUS
companion organization. That would be a good thing if so.

[Jason Grout]

The Europe/NumFOCUS situation would be a good thing to reach out to Andy or Leah about.

Jason

[Sylvain Corlay]

Setting up the NumFOCUS EU is work in progress. We will be posting more information on it very soon.

Best,

Sylvain

[John H Palmieri]

I am writing to follow up on this. The University of Washington has now stopped accepting donations to the Sage Foundation fund. People looking for ways to donate in support of Sage will need to find other avenues for that, and I encourage people to create those avenues if they know how. Of course (speaking as chair of the UW Department of Mathematics), we still welcome all contributions to support UW mathematics ;)

  John

[Vincent Delecroix]

What about https://numfocus.org/?

[Samuel Lelievre]

Tue 2019-06-25 19:02:56 UTC, vdelecroix:

>

> What about https://numfocus.org/? 

It would make a lot of sense for SageMath to seek fiscal sponsorship of NumFOCUS

and of NumFOCUS-Europe when it comes into existence (which is work in progress).

The information page about NumFOCUS fiscal sponsorship gives more detail on what

it means to be a fiscally sponsored project of NumFOCUS, on how it helps a project,

and on the requirements to become one:

    https://numfocus.org/information-fiscal-sponsorship

Note the dedicated mailing list for discussion of these topics:

    https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/sagemath-numfocus

[E. Madison Bray]

Indeed, see my post about this almost a year ago (yikes!):
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/sagemath-numfocus/5DkIDzlLksM/BMxvAMfCAAAJ

It's something I've been wanting to take some charge on, but it's a
little complex, because part of the process for NumFOCUS sponsorship
will require some community organizing on my/our parts. In particular
(and I believe this would be good in general) we need to formalize a
bit better some aspects of Sage's project governance. This doesn't
necessarily mean we need to *change* much, but rather formalize a bit.

The main thing that we would have to establish that does not currently
exist is some kind of semi-formal governence body of 3 to 5 people:

"Have a leadership body or team consisting of at least 3 people; these
people should not be employed by the same entity or share a common
affiliation beyond that of the project."

NumFOCUS otherwise doesn't make any requirements as to what those
peoples' role on the project is, how they're selected, or what kind of
power or control they have over the project. My suggestion would be
to give them as limited power as possible. The main point of this is
just that the project has some guarantee of continuity that isn't
dependent on the whims of just one person (or a disorganized blob of
random people moving in and out of the project). To have some
reliable points of contact for the project. The main issue at stake
here is that these people are likely to be the first point of contact
when it comes to deciding how funds get distributed, so to that extent
it is important.

And so, as such, we don't really want to pick a "leadership body"
without some kind of agreed-upon semi-formal governance document
which, among other things, explains the composure of this leadership
body, what its job is (as stated above as limited as possible), how
its members were chosen, and procedures for adding/removing/rotating
members.

Python's recently adopted PEP-13 can serve as a good example:
https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0013/

But it doesn't even have to necessarily be as wordy as that. Another
good example is this slide that William made last year that sums of
Sage's governance in 3 bullet points:

https://cocalc.com/6cd832d3-c523-41e3-9e54-c8f2d2e8fa2a/raw/travel/2018/2018-07-icms/talks/sage/slides/slides.html#5

* Governance:
* when something is disputed, there's a vote on the sage-devel
mailing list
* count the votes a week later
* you get to vote if you are paying attention

Beyond details of the leadership body I would hesitate to "formalize"
anything much beyond rewriting those bullet points as 3 or 4
sentences. We want to keep this simple as possible to keep the
likelihood of disagreement over this to a minimal (though I'm sure
there will be some).

I think it would also be good to formalize the information on
https://wiki.sagemath.org/Community a little better, in the form of a
document that is easily accessible on the main sagemath.org website
and is not easily editable without submitting pull requests.