Introducing the pre-Approved Grant #274
Conversation
Reqrefusion
changed the title
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This looks like a mechanism to pre-attach a certain amount of money to the resolution of a known bug/issue. In that sense, it is basically a bounty. I don't have a problem with bounties as a funding concept but I'm skeptical that they really work. Even in this case, the developer could invest a significant amount of time implementing a feature or fixing a bug and the resulting PR could be rejected by the maintainers (code quality, incompatibility with other features, etc). In that case, the developer would be out of luck. The payout a bounty HAS to be tied to successful acceptance of a PR that closes an issue. This puts all the burden of research to understand the requirements, planning, and development on the developer. He or she runs the risk of doing a lot of work for a small amount of money. Again, I'm not opposed to the program. I'm just skeptical about its effectiveness outside a very narrow set of issues like those we tackled at the end of the 1.0 development cycle. |
When it comes down to basics, grant is actually a bounty. The purpose of both is to compensate for alternative costs. Is there any need to go so basic? For example, it is wrong to lock a person in a place. But if the monopoly of force does this by operating various processes, this will be justice. The important thing here is the processes.
All work goes through the technical committee. The technical committee informs about this. In addition, it is envisaged that the entire process will be carried out before the work is completed. For example, a person cannot apply for an accepted PR. Also, maybe you missed it, but as it is said that no money is put into issues, this is Grant, not Bounty. The person makes a prediction about the compensation in the grant proposal and can express his opinion about it in the technical committee. And there may even be a vote at the general assembly to determine this compensation. These processes are foreseen.
Unlike you, I'm completely skeptical. I even want it to be avoided in any way. The system here is actually a method implemented by states. For underdeveloped regions within the country, such a thing is generally announced at the beginning of each year and investors benefit from it. Of course, investors follow the required processes. There is no bounty situation here. |
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It is true that with the grant system becoming quarterly, it becomes a long reach for someone who would like a small grant for working on a small issue. This system would make it possible to ask for, say, 100 or 200 to solve a smaller issue. That might be something we do want to offer. But generally speaking, I also think people who want money from the FPA, which is after all community money, DO need to do their homework and build a proposal. It does not need to be long, but it needs to be made. I think that is the kind of "contract" between a developer and the community that we want. Again it does not need to be big, but the act of receiving community money IMHO requires this step to be "fair". Also, this proposal counts on the work of FPA members and the reviewers community. It is difficult to require anything form the FPA members outside of voting, so there is little chance that that part would ever happen. And for the reviewers, the idea is to try to reduce their work with the quarterly system. |
There was something in the past about a propasal being accepted without being prepared, but in this text I gave up on that and stipulated that one must present a grant propasal. As I said, the process is actually the same; the person proposes a grant, the technical committee examines it, but since the voting is done before, if there are no problems mentioned in the text, the proposal is accepted. In other words, the person can continue working throughout the process.
It can even make the process more attractive so that if the person working on it actually meets the technical qualifications, they can just go ahead and get paid without worrying about it. Because the voting has already been done. Maybe it can even be said here that PR review is sufficient for offers below a certain amount of money, which I think would also reduce the burden on reviewers. I do not ignore some problems. But I think these problems are within the grants. |
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I set it to 500 euros, but I think it could be 1000 or 1500. With the existence of a 3-month period, such a thing even becomes necessary. Because 3 months is a very long time. |
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How would we budget for this? Do we have to encumber the total unpaid amount and just let it float until it gets claimed? Do we make a guess about how much will get spent in a given year? No idea was GAAP is here. |
In general, I do not foresee a separate budget because I see this as a sub -type of the grant. It is completely financed from the same budget as the grant. |
I don't see how that could work. For the grant program to work, the grant review committee needs to know how much money they can give to applicants. For the pre-approved grants, whomever is deciding on those needs to know how much money they have to work with: they clearly can't just decide to take the whole grant budget. |
I don't fully understand what you're trying to say, but there are parts related to money. In addition, the examination of the technical community is in question. It can be appealed in every part of money. It contains many regulations related to money. An objection period is given for the desired money. There is a "implied acceptance" situation here. |
It is a documented version of the suggestion given by me at #257 so that it is not lost.
@chennes @prokoudine @yorikvanhavre
I thought this was appropriate as a name. I think "post-facto grant" does not fully correspond to it.