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.