+1
Best,
-Michiel
--------------------------------------------
On Wed, 1/21/15, Michael Droettboom <md...@stsci.edu> wrote:
Subject: [Matplotlib-users] Matplotlib and Numfocus Fiscal Sponsorship
Agreement (FSA)
To: "matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net"
<matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>, "matplotlib-users"
<matplotlib-us...@lists.sourceforge.net>
Date: Wednesday, January 21, 2015, 12:48 AM
Matplotlib
is a widely used, well regarded, and powerful
visualization
library that has dominated the Python
visualization stack for
over a decade. However, to maintain that position,
matplotlib
must continue to evolve. Complementary or
alternative
libraries are appearing at an increasing rate,
including
browser-based plotting and GPU acceleration. To
maintain its
leadership position for the next decade,
Matplotlib must
interface with these alternatives while
simultaneously
expanding its capabilities and becoming easier to
use and
learn.
Matplotlib’s
large existing user base (greater than 50,000)
means that new
developments need to be carefully balanced with
maintaining
existing interfaces. With the large user and
code base comes
a significant maintenance and user-support burden.
These
responsibilities currently account for a majority
of the
core-developer time spent on matplotlib and has
resulted in
both the code base and community being in a
healthier state
than ever before. Even 6 years ago there was no
automated
testing to speak of and the number of contributors
continues
to soar on github. However, this effort is, for
the most part,
done on a volunteer basis in the nights and
weekends of the
core developers. To go beyond this maintenance
level—to make
step-change improvements for the benefit of
matplotlib’s
users—will require funding for full-time
developers. Inspired
and encouraged by the example of IPython, we would
like to
begin the process of fundraising.
Managing
funding on the needed scale is a complex and
time-consuming
process. Thankfully, NumFOCUS, a 501(c)3 charity
organisation
co-founded by John Hunter, offers a fiscal
sponsorship
agreement to minimize the administrative and legal
burden on
open source projects. We would like to enlist
NumFOCUS as our
agents in all legal and financial matters,
including banking,
accepting donations as a non-profit, payroll, and
access to
legal counsel. As part of the agreement,
NumFOCUS would
charge a percentage of all funds raised to cover
their costs.
The full text of the agreement is
attached.
To
comply with the legal and accounting requirements
of a
non-profit, matplotlib needs to form an
administrative body to
interact with NumFOCUS and direct the disbursement
of any
funds. The proposed initial members of the body,
are myself
(Mike Droettboom), Eric Firing, Phil Elson, and
Thomas
Caswell, with Thomas acting as the point of
contact with
NumFOCUS.
In
practice, signing an FSA will have very little
impact on the
matplotlib project itself - it will still be
BSD-licensed and
community-driven as it has always been, and the
only
motivation for doing this is to give us an
opportunity to
apply for funding to do more work on matplotlib.
We'd like to
canvas the community's opinion on the matter,
but to put a
concrete timeline on the discussion, we would like
to propose
signing an FSA with NumFOCUS in 3 weeks (Feb 10th
2015) unless
there is a major community discomfort with us
doing so.
Cheers,
Michael Droettboom
--
Michael Droettboom
Science Software Branch
Space Telescope Science Institute
http://www.droettboom.com
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New Year. New Location. New Benefits. New Data Center in Ashburn, VA.
GigeNET is offering a free month of service with a new server in Ashburn.
Choose from 2 high performing configs, both with 100TB of bandwidth.
Higher redundancy.Lower latency.Increased capacity.Completely compliant.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/gigenet
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