[GRASS-PSC] [GSoC 2021 - Urgent] Feedback Required Regarding Disbursal of GSoC Org Payments/Mentor Stipend to the Mentors

[Helena Mitasova]

Rajat,

based on the feedback from GRASS GIS PSC the preference is that the funds go to the main mentors and they can decide how to use them,
so the proposed idea below will work for us

> Our decision as administrators is to reach out to the projects’ PSC for your comments about the following idea.
> 	• GSoC team will deposit $400 per accepted proposal
> 	• The project can claim the money and distribute it to the “main” mentors and “backup” mentors as they see fit.
> 		• The claim can be done after the GSoC team deposits the stipend to the OSGeo organization.

Let me know if you need more info, but I can answer questions on the board directly as well,

Helena

> On Apr 29, 2021, at 3:11 PM, Rajat Shinde <rajatshinde2303 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Dear Prof. Mitasova,
> 
> Greetings!
> I am sending this email with regards to the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2021 stipend for mentors. This is OSGeo’s 15th year participating in the GSoC 2021 and GRASS GIS is one of the participating projects under the OSGeo umbrella organization. Also, this is our second year working as OSGeo-GSoC administrators team, and since last year it came to our attention that mentors were not getting remuneration for their work. We feel that this is very unfortunate and lacks incentive for the mentors to continue mentoring. Moreover, mentoring for GSoC is a full-time commitment and requires a lot of effort (which might vary depending on the coding and administration mentoring). 
> 
> In this regard, I had a meeting with the board on April 26 [1] and it was clear to me that the GSoC program does make a deposit to OSGeo. Citing below from the website for reference:
> 
> [1] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2021-04-26#Google_Summer_of_Code_organization_payment_discussion
> 
> “$400 per student developer for your organization (often called the mentor stipend) though the money does not generally go to the actual mentor. One payment is sent to the org, and if the org wishes to disburse the funds to their mentors they are welcome to do that on their own.” [2]
> 
> [2] https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/help/org-payments#i_included_in_your_payment
> 
> During the meeting I mentioned the following facts:
> 	• Accepted proposals are required to have at least 2 mentors and one of them is the “main” mentor
> 		• It is strongly recommended to have 3 mentors
> 		• The additional mentors are “backup” mentors
> 		• A mentor can not mentor more than 2 proposals
> 		• A mentor can not be the “main” mentor of 2 or more proposals
> 	• Having mentioned that the number of projects participating in the OSGeo-GSoC program has been decreasing, as a comparison:
> 		• 20 proposals in 12 projects in 2016 (https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2016_Accepted)
> 		• 13 proposals in 8 projects in 2017 (https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2017_Accepted)
> 		• 10 proposals in 8 projects in 2018 (https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2018_Accepted)
> 		• 7 proposals in 4 projects in 2019 (https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2019_Accepted)
> 		• 10 proposals in 6 projects in 2020 (https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2020_Accepted)
> 	• A successful ex GSoC student can act as a mentor in the project he/she participated in, but they are choosing other alternatives for summer that have a remuneration or incentive.
> 	• Projects organize the actual activities of the mentors as they see fit, some projects have specialized coding mentors who are normally project committers and the administrative mentors, that review the administrative part of the students.
> 
> After talking with the board of directors, it was suggested to talk with the mentors or projects about the distribution of the stipend.
> 
> Our decision as administrators is to reach out to the projects’ PSC for your comments about the following idea.
> 	• GSoC team will deposit $400 per accepted proposal
> 	• The project can claim the money and distribute it to the “main” mentors and “backup” mentors as they see fit.
> 		• The claim can be done after the GSoC team deposits the stipend to the OSGeo organization.
> 
> This idea has not yet been approved by the board, we need your input to refine the idea and procedure. Based on your inputs, we will list the possible options and forward them to the OSGeo board for their comments.
> 
> Please forward the email to the corresponding PSC or equivalent of your project, and give us an answer as soon as possible, so that we can forward it to the OSGeo board for approval. It would be amazing if we could get the responses before the GSoC slot submission deadline i.e. May 3rd, 2021.
> 
> Kind regards
> Rajat Shinde and Rahul Chauhan
> OSGeo-GSoC Administration Team
> URL: https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2021_Administrative

Helena Mitasova
Professor at the Department of Marine, 
Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences
Associate director and faculty fellow at the Center for Geospatial Analytics
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695-8208
hmitaso at ncsu.edu

"All electronic mail messages in connection with State business which are sent to or received by this account are subject to the NC Public Records Law and may be disclosed to third parties.”