Re: OPW; Where does the 500$ for each GSoC goes?

[Jeff Fortin <nekohayo gmail com>]

Le samedi 13 septembre 2014 à 14:32 +0200, Sébastien Wilmet a écrit :
> Hello,
>
> I know that money and OPW are sensitive topics, but I would like to
> better understand, and some transparency shouldn't hurt.
>
> For each GSoC student, the mentoring organization receives 500$. How is
> this money used?
>
> - Is the money used for travel sponsorship to GUADEC? What about
>   students that don't go to GUADEC?

This is my understanding, yes. Someone can correct me if those funds are
used for anything else, but I'm suspecting they are used entirely for
covering interns' attendance to GUADEC, taking into account that 500$ is
really not a lot of money to get there (unless you're already in
Europe). Typically, any transcontinental flight is easily going to be
way above 1k$. And you have to add accommodation to that.


> - Can the mentor receive this money? Or at least choose how the 500$ is
>   used?

I don't think mentors have access to that money for their individual
use, in the interest of the above — someone can correct me if I'm wrong
on that one.


> - Can the money be stored so that several years later it can be used to
>   pay a developer for working on the same module(s) of the GSoCs? For
>   example the GStreamer project donated 2500€ to the Pitivi fundraising
>   campaign, and this money comes partly from several GSoCs:
>  http://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2014/03/03/pitivi-fundraiser-pass-the-10-000-usd-dollar-mark/

It needs to be clarified that the example you are referring to is
special: GStreamer was its own mentoring organisation for GSoC for many
years, hence the fact that they have their own earmarked funds. It just
happens that those funds were collected and stored by the GNOME
Foundation, but the Foundation cannot use them for itself, GStreamer
decides what it wishes to do with those funds. A similar situation
exists for GIMP and Pitivi.

If GStreamer was not a standalone GSoC mentoring org for a particular
year but still benefited from having GSoC interns under the umbrella of
the GNOME project, then I suspect the mentor money would go to GNOME
unless there is a particular agreement about that (which might be the
case; if so, I was not aware of it).

In theory I don't see a reason why GNOME couldn't "store for many years"
the GNOME project gsoc mentor 500$ stipends it receives, except that in
practice they are too little and thus end up being used completely (I
think).


> I think this kind of discussion should be entirely allowed, and should
> be discussed in the open.

Absolutely.