RE: [Axiom-developer] Literate documentation

[Bill Page]

On May 14, 2007 7:43 PM Tim Daly wrote:
> ... 
> 2) They won't fund work that is done by individuals
> 
>      Funded work needs an existing funding source that can handle
>      the finances. A university has a provost to take 55% or more
>      of the cash as "overhead". Open source does not have the
>      financial machinery in place to accept grant money or manage
>      the required reporting requirements.
> 
>      Funding an open source project with grant money has also
>      raised the question about how to distribute and use the
>      funds. Do we pay individuals? How do we judge the work? How
>      is the work to be reported? Who manages the money?
>
>      I've pointed out that open source could use the funding in at
>      least four "group" related ways. One to fund a developer
>      conference covering travel, etc. A second is to fund a
>      "compile farm" setup at a data center which contains a wide
>      range of machines and operating systems. Such a farm could
>      be used by many open source projects. A third would be to
>      fund
> ... 
> 
> My conclusion is that the NSF and NIST are irrelevant to open
> source.
> ...

It might be interesting to note that the initial development of the
Sage project was funded by NSF and involved both your first and
second examples of "group" related ways of spending the money as
well as funding the work of some graduate students. It is true
however that William Stein was (and is still) working in the context
of a university with a provost. I do not know however what the long
term prospects are for the continuation of this kind of support for
Sage.

http://sage.math.washington.edu/sage/ack.html
http://sage.math.washington.edu