I disagree with most of this.
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I find the statement “NumFOCUS is grants” between confusing and misleading.
PyMC basically pays NumFOCUS to act as our legal umbrella, manage the project money and ensuring we are complying with any legal requirements related to that. When funders like CZI award a grant to PyMC it isn’t a wire transfer to our accounts, there is much more overhead and bureaucracy involved, which NumFOCUS takes care of (and consequently keeps a small percentage of any grant PyMC gets to pay this overhead). Focusing strictly money-wise, that is the main thing we get from NumFOCUS, without that we wouldn’t have been able to receive the CZI grant at all.
It is confusing though because NumFOCUS doesn’t limit to doing only these administrative tasks, it also seeks its own grants/sponsors, and organizes events like PyData. And then distributes part of the benefits it can get from that back to the project via small development grants. And PyMC has also gotten a couple of those. They represent less money than CZI and also than funds from PyMCon sponsors but they would be “numfocus grants” strictly speaking; however, I think this isn’t what was meant above I think and it was meant for any money paid via NumFOCUS.
All the money that gets paid via NumFOCUS is allocated by the project[1], and NumFOCUS only has a say on these movements in making sure we are not violating conditions of the grant or legal requirements as a non-profit. The grant proposal is written as PyMC project and it rebudgeting is needed, it is also discussed and agreed on as project wide decision.
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GSoC (and similar initiatives like Outreachy for that matter) is irrelevant here as they are specific to newcomers in OSS which would make anyone receiving such stipend not eligible as council member. Still, it starts with a project wide generated list of ideas, candidates then submit proposals and who gets selected is again decided by the project.
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Whatever the structure and similarity between the grants like CZI that have been awarded to PyMC and Labs there is a key difference which I think is the main thing that should be taken into account when considering to whom does someone report: Labs decides who gets the money, how they get it and why. Small note to make super clear that there is nothing wrong with that, in fact it is encouraged even and one of the main things that makes labs an institutional partner.
I might try to frame that more as a “minor activity” than secondary. I know this is quite subjective so should not be verbatim what goes into the governance, but if having or not the income from the extra contracting gig is relevant to the steering council member then it is close to impossible for them to remain unbiased. The goals of Labs, Intuitive Bayes (of which 3 candidates are also part of) or Google (cutting it close at 2 candidates but had 3 nominees too) might not be the same as the goals of the project at all times. But as @Armavica used as extreme example in the first post, receiving a 1€ payment should probably not count
I completely agree with that, adding a caveat though which is we need to combine this with isolating “top of the barrel” people who are not affiliated with Labs if PyMC project decisions end up happening at Labs. We might be closer to this second situation despite efforts to the contrary (with both of you being among the most dedicated to ensuring PyMC discussions and decisions happen in PyMC spaces).
Sometimes it is more a “should be” than an “is” because the governance is not always completely followed, but I think this is a different issue ↩︎