On 2/21/15, Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote: > In general WMF has a conservative grant policy (with the exception of IEG, > grant funding seems to be getting more conservative every year, and some > mission-aligned projects can't get funding because they don't fit into the > current molds of the grants programs). Spontaneous cash awards for previous > work are unlikely. However, if there is an existing project that could use > some developer time, it may be possible to get grant funding for future > work. >
[Rant] I find this kind of doubtful when IEG's (which for an individual developer doing a "small" project is really the type of funding that applies) have been traditionally denied for anything that even remotely touches WMF infrastructure. (Arguably the original question was about toollabs things, which is far enough away from WMF infrastructure to be allowed as an IEG grant, but I won't let that stop my rant...). Furthermore, it appears that IEGs now seem to be focusing primarily on gender gap grants. I find it odd, that we have grants through GSOC and OPW to people who are largely "newbies" (although there are exceptions), and probably not in a position to do anything "major". IEG provides grants as long as they are far enough away from the main site to not actually change much. But we do not provide grants to normal contributors who want to improve the technology of our websites, in big or important ways. Ostensibly this is done in the name of: >Any technical components must be standalone or completed on-wiki. Projects are >completed without assistance or review from WMF engineering, so MediaWiki >Extensions or software features requiring code review and integration cannot be >funded. On-wiki tech work (templates, user scripts, gadgets) and completely >standalone applications without a hosting dependency are allowed. Which on one hand is understandable. WMF-tech has its own priorities, and can't spend all its time babysitting whatever random ideas get funded. So I understand the fear that brought this about. On the other hand it is silly, since a grant to existing tech contributors is going to have much less review burden than gsoc/opw, and many projects might have minimal review burden, especially because most review could perhaps be done by non-wmf employees with +2, requiring only a final security/performance sign off. In fact, we do already provide very limited review to whatever randoms submit code to us over the internet (regardless of how they are funded, or lack thereof). If IEG grants were allowed in this area, it would be something that the grantee would have to plan and account for, with the understanding that nobody is going to provide a team of WMF developers to make someone else's grant happen. We should be providing the same amount of support to IEG grantees that we would to anyone who submitted code to us. That is, not much, but perhaps a little, and the amount dependent on how good their ideas are, and how clean their code is. [End rant] Politically, I think its dangerous how WMF seems to more and more become the only stakeholder in MediaWiki development (Not that there is anything wrong with the WMF, I just don't like there being only 1 stakeholder). One way for there to be a more diverse group of interests is to allow grants to groups with goals consistent with Wikimedia's. While not exactly super diverse (all groups have similar goals), at least there would then be more groups, and hopefully result in more interesting and radical projects. --bawolff _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
