Hey Board,
I wanted to bring up a somewhat important issue related to GSoC and
mentoring. As we've continued throughout the years, more and more of
the mentor payments have been going to mentors rather than donated to
the project (economic issues is a stated factor for many). This in
itself is really not an issue, the issue however is the delay in
payments to the mentors caused by random and unpredictable issues that
happen through the process. For example, payment to one of our mentors
(I'm assuming all from last year) for GSoC 2010 didn't get to them
until less than 2 weeks ago.
A majority of mentors this year has chosen to receive the payments
themselves. In at least one case we have an individual who actually
needs to have the payment go through very soon for tax purposes in
their country. Given that we have a healthy amount of funds in the
bank, and the coming funds are for lack of a better way to put it, a
sure thing from Google... is the board willing to agree to advance
money to ensure we take care of our contributors? I do want to make it
clear that we are not paying people to work on the project, just
advancing payments to contributors who are hopefully bringing in the
next wave of contributors.
If the board wants specifics I am more than happy to provide them...
however, it's actually something I would prefer to do off a public
list for the sake of judgment of any participants in GSoC (as our
defacto GSoC admin and an individual who respects others anonymity, I
want to respect the privacy of all participants).
Cheers,
Josh
P.S. To the two conservancy accounts, if you are not subscribed to our
board list, I would recommend it... it's really low volume and almost
always concerns your interaction with us.
