On Tue, Nov 21, 2006 at 04:10:12PM +0000, Jason Clifford wrote: > I've been giving some more thought to this today and had an idea I'd like > some feedback on. > > Firstly it now seems to me that the idea of a grants programme in the > format currently envision just isn't working for whatever reason. Maybe > it's because, as others have suggested, there just isn't enough money to > interest people. > > Looking around at the more prominent people in the UK Free Software > communities (well the Linux communities anyway) it seems that almost all > became involved while at school/college/uni. Many if not all were writing > code for or otherwise contributing to Free Software projects. > > How about the idea of part time employment for college/uni students to do > just that - write code or otherwise contribute to FS projects? > > If I budget to pay each of them ?4,500 during the year UKFSN could do this > for 2 students in 2007 rising to 3 or 4 in 2008 and about 10 in 2009.
That seems to me a good idea. Especially if it is distributed through the year (so we can check that it isn't just spent on booze!). It's going back to the "sponsor a student" idea which produced some good results in the 80s, and will favourably incline them to FOSS development (many students see FOSS as "a good idea, but I couldn't live off it"). A related point -- could money be put into advertising of FOSS jobs? I know there is a website for FOSS Perl programmers, but for other areas finding the jobs is difficult. If someone leaves university and looks for a job in FOSS... Chris C _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
