Excellent subject line. Permit me to give a different take. But first, I want to give credit to an off-hand comment made by David and seeing an early draft of what Gris and Naomi are working on as inspirations.
The board approved $70K for D&I for this FY. This is for Survey Design and Contributor Experience Research. I'll generalize a bit, and say that the value we receive in return for these investments is knowledge. (See https://s.apache.org/giFi) The board either declined to fund or has not come to consensus on Outreachy. We went on a number of tangents, relating to Sponsors and artificially limiting the set of projects that could apply. Neither achieved consensus, so let's ignore both. The question to pose: what if the primary value we seek to receive from engaging in Outreachy was knowledge? If that were the case, would it make sense for the ASF to directly fund Outreachy at levels comparable to what the board agreed to invest in Survey Design and Contributor Experience Research? What if we were to assume that any code that an intern would contribute over a handful of months is incidental? The post that Naomi and Gris will be making in the upcoming days describes the knowledge that we hope to acquire from working with Outreachy. - Sam Ruby
