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NEP: NumPy sponsorship guidelines (NEP 46)
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| ===================================== | ||
| NEP 46 — NumPy Sponsorship Guidelines | ||
| ===================================== | ||
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| :Author: Ralf Gommers <ralf.gommers@gmail.com> | ||
| :Status: Draft | ||
| :Type: Process | ||
| :Created: 2020-12-27 | ||
| :Resolution: <url> (required for Accepted | Rejected | Withdrawn) | ||
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| Abstract | ||
| -------- | ||
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| This NEP provides guidelines on how the NumPy project will acknowledge | ||
| financial and in-kind support. | ||
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| Motivation and Scope | ||
| -------------------- | ||
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| In the past few years, the NumPy project has gotten significant financial | ||
| support, as well as dedicated work time for maintainers to work on NumPy. There | ||
| is a need to acknowledge that support - it's the right thing to do, it's | ||
| helpful when looking for new funding, and funders and organizations expect or | ||
| require it, Furthermore, having a clear policy for how NumPy acknowledges | ||
| support is helpful when searching for new support. Finally, this policy may | ||
| help set reasonable expectations for potential funders. | ||
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| This NEP is aimed at both the NumPy community - who can use it as a guideline | ||
| when looking for support on behalf of the project and when acknowledging | ||
| existing support - and at past, current and prospective sponsors, who often | ||
| want or need to know what they get in return for their support other than a | ||
| healthier NumPy. | ||
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| The scope of this proposal includes: | ||
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| - direct financial support, employers providing paid time for NumPy maintainers | ||
| and regular contributors, and in-kind support such as free hardware resources or | ||
| services, | ||
| - where and how NumPy acknowledges support (e.g., logo placement on the website), | ||
| - the amount and duration of support which leads to acknowledgement, and | ||
| - who in the NumPy project is responsible for sponsorship related topics, and | ||
| how to contact them. | ||
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| How NumPy will acknowledge support | ||
| ---------------------------------- | ||
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| There will be two different ways to acknowledge financial and in-kind support: | ||
| one to recognize significant active support, and another one to recognize | ||
| support received in the past and smaller amounts of support. | ||
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| Entities who fall under "significant active supporter" we'll call Sponsor. | ||
| The minimum level of support given to NumPy to be considered a Sponsor are: | ||
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| - $30,000/yr for unrestricted financial contributions (e.g., donations) | ||
| - $60,000/yr for financial contributions for a particular purpose (e.g., grants) | ||
| - $100,000/yr for in-kind contributions (e.g., time for employees to contribute) | ||
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| We define support being active as: | ||
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| - for a one-off donation: it was received within the previous 12 months, | ||
| - for recurring or financial or in-kind contributions: they should be ongoing. | ||
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| After support moves from "active" to "inactive" status, the acknowledgement | ||
| will be left in its place for at least another 6 months. If appropriate, the | ||
| funding team can discuss opportunities for renewal with the sponsor. After | ||
| those 6 months, acknowledgement may be moved to the historical overview. The | ||
| exact timing of this move is at the discretion of the funding team, because | ||
| there may be reasons to keep it in the more prominent place for longer. | ||
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| The rationale for the above funding levels is that unrestricted financial | ||
| contributions are typically the most valuable for the project, and the hardest | ||
| to obtain. The opposite is true for in-kind contributions. The dollar value of | ||
| the levels also reflect that NumPy's needs have grown to the point where we | ||
| need multiple paid developers in order to effectively support our user base and | ||
| continue to move the project forward. Financial support at or above these | ||
| levels is needed to be able to make a significant difference. | ||
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| Sponsors will get acknowledged through: | ||
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| - a small logo displayed on the front page of the NumPy website | ||
| - prominent logo placement on https://numpy.org/about/ | ||
| - logos displayed in talks about NumPy by maintainers | ||
| - announcements of the sponsorship on the NumPy mailing list and the numpy-team | ||
| Twitter account | ||
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| In addition to Sponsors, we already have the concept of Institutional Partner | ||
| (defined in NumPy's | ||
| `governance document <https://numpy.org/devdocs/dev/governance/index.html>`__), | ||
| for entities who employ a NumPy maintainer and let them work on NumPy as part | ||
| of their official duties. The governance document doesn't currently define a | ||
| minimum amount of paid maintainer time needed to be considered for partnership. | ||
| Therefore we propose that level here, roughly in line with the sponsorship | ||
| levels: | ||
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| - 6 person-months/yr of paid work time for one or more NumPy maintainers or | ||
| regular contributors to any NumPy team or activity | ||
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| Institutional Partners get the same benefits as Sponsors, in addition to what | ||
| is specified in the NumPy governance document. | ||
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| Finally, a new page on the website (https://numpy.org/funding/, linked from the | ||
| About page) will be added to acknowledge all current and previous sponsors, | ||
| partners, and any other entities and individuals who provided $5,000 or more of | ||
| financial or in-kind support. This page will include relevant details of | ||
| support (dates, amounts, names, and purpose); no logos will be used on this | ||
| page. The rationale for the $5,000 minimum level is to keep the amount of work | ||
| maintaining the page reasonable; the level is the equivalent of, e.g., one GSoC | ||
| or a person-week's worth of engineering time in a Western country, which seems | ||
| like a reasonable lower limit. | ||
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| Implementation | ||
| -------------- | ||
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| The following content changes need to be made: | ||
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| - Add a section with small logos towards the bottom of the `numpy.org | ||
| <https://numpy.org/>`__ website. | ||
| - Create a full list of historical and current support and deploy it to | ||
| https://numpy.org/funding. | ||
| - Update the NumPy governance document for changes to Institutional Partner | ||
| eligibility requirements and benefits. | ||
| - Update https://numpy.org/about with details on how to get in touch with the | ||
| NumPy project about sponsorship related matters (see next section). | ||
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| NumPy Funding Team | ||
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
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| At the moment NumPy has only one official body, the Steering Council, and no | ||
| good way to get in touch with either that body or any person or group | ||
| responsible for funding and sponsorship related matters. The way this is | ||
| typically done now is to somehow find the personal email of a maintainer, and | ||
| email them in private. There is a need to organize this more transparently - a | ||
| potential sponsor isn't likely to inquire through the mailing list, nor is it | ||
| easy for a potential sponsor to know if they're reaching out to the right | ||
| person in private. | ||
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| https://numpy.org/about/ already says that NumPy has a "funding and grants" | ||
| team. However that is not the case. We propose to organize this team, name team | ||
| members on it, and add the names of those team members plus a dedicated email | ||
| address for the team to the About page. | ||
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| Status before this proposal | ||
| --------------------------- | ||
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| Acknowledgement of support | ||
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
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| At the time of writing (Dec 2020), the logos of the four largest financial | ||
| sponsors and two institutional partners are displayed on | ||
| https://numpy.org/about/. The `Nature paper about NumPy <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2649-2>`__ | ||
| mentions some early funding. No comprehensive list of received funding and | ||
| in-kind support is published anywhere. | ||
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| Decisions on which logos to list on the website have been made mostly by the | ||
| website team. Decisions on which entities to recognize as Institutional Partner | ||
| have been made by the NumPy Steering Council. | ||
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| NumPy governance, decision-making, and financial oversight | ||
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | ||
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| *This section is meant as context for the reader, to help put the rest of this | ||
| NEP in perspective, and perhaps answer questions the reader has when reading | ||
| this as a potential sponsor.* | ||
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| NumPy has a formal governance structure defined in | ||
| `this governance document <https://numpy.org/devdocs/dev/governance/index.html>`__). | ||
| Decisions are made by consensus among all active participants in a discussion | ||
| (typically on the mailing list), and if consensus cannot be reached then the | ||
| Steering Council takes the decision (also by consensus). | ||
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| NumPy is a sponsored project of NumFOCUS, a US-based 501(c)3 nonprofit. | ||
| NumFOCUS administers NumPy funds, and ensures they are spent in accordance with | ||
| its mission and nonprofit status. In practice, NumPy has a NumFOCUS | ||
| subcommittee (with its members named in the NumPy governance document) who can | ||
| authorize financial transactions. Those transactions, for example paying a | ||
| contractor for a particular activity or deliverable, are decided on by the | ||
| NumPy Steering Council. | ||
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| Alternatives | ||
| ------------ | ||
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| *Tiered sponsorship levels.* We considered using tiered sponsorship levels, and | ||
| rejected this alternative because it would be more complex, and not necessarily | ||
| communicate the right intent - the minimum levels are for us to determine how | ||
| to acknowledge support that we receive, not a commercial value proposition. | ||
| Entities typically will support NumPy because they rely on the project or want | ||
| to help advance it, and not to get brand awareness through logo placement. | ||
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| *Listing all donations*. Note that in the past we have received many smaller | ||
| donations, mostly from individuals through NumFOCUS. It would be great to list | ||
| all of those contributions, but given the way we receive information on those | ||
| donations right now, that would be quite labor-intensive. If we manage to move | ||
| to a more suitable platform, such as `Open Collective <https://opencollective.com/>`__, | ||
| in the future, we should reconsider listing all individual donations. | ||
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| Related Work | ||
| ------------ | ||
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| Here we provide a few examples of how other projects handle sponsorship | ||
| guidelines and acknowledgements. | ||
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| *Scikit-learn* has a narrow banner with logos at the bottom of | ||
| https://scikit-learn.org, and a list of present funding and past sponsors at | ||
| https://scikit-learn.org/stable/about.html#funding. Plus a separate section | ||
| "Infrastructure support" at the bottom of that same About page. | ||
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| *Jupyter* has logos of sponsors and institutional partners in two sections on | ||
| https://jupyter.org/about. Some subprojects have separate approaches, for | ||
| example sponsors are listed (by using the `all-contributors | ||
| <https://github.com/all-contributors/all-contributors>`__ bot) in the README for | ||
| `jupyterlab-git <https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab-git>`__. For a recent | ||
| discussion on that, see `here <jupyterlab-git acknowledgements discussion>`_. | ||
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| *NumFOCUS* has a large banner with sponsor logos on its front page at | ||
| https://numfocus.org, and a full page with sponsors at different sponsorship | ||
| levels listed at https://numfocus.org/sponsors. They also have a | ||
| `Corporate Sponsorship Prospectus <https://numfocus.org/blog/introducing-our-newest-corporate-sponsorship-prospectus>`__, | ||
| which includes a lot of detail on both sponsorship levels and benefits, as well | ||
| as how that helps NumFOCUS-affiliated projects (including NumPy). | ||
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| Discussion | ||
| ---------- | ||
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| Mailing list thread(s) discussing this NEP: TODO | ||
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| References and Footnotes | ||
| ------------------------ | ||
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| - `Inside NumPy: preparing for the next decade <https://github.com/numpy/archive/blob/master/content/inside_numpy_presentation_SciPy2019.pdf>`__ presentation at SciPy'19 discussing the impact of the first NumPy grant. | ||
| - `Issue <https://github.com/numpy/numpy/issues/13393>`__ and | ||
| `email <https://mail.python.org/pipermail/numpy-discussion/2019-April/079371.html>`__ | ||
| where IBM offered a $5,000 bounty for VSX SIMD support | ||
| - `JupyterLab Corporate Engagement and Contribution Guide <https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab/blob/master/CORPORATE.md>`__ | ||
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| .. _jupyterlab-git acknowledgements discussion: https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab-git/pull/530 | ||
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| Copyright | ||
| --------- | ||
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| This document has been placed in the public domain. |