TL;DR:
- If there no progress by 31 July 2024 ask NLnet for advice because the deadline won’t be met
- Be prepared to cancel the grant so that NLnet has enough time to redistribute the funds to other projects
There are five more months to the deadline, which is enough time to complete the tasks. However, since there was no progress in the past six months, it is worth considering the possibility that there will not be progress in the next five months either.
When that grant was submitted I proposed to help with administrative aspects of managing the grant, which is what I have done so far. And what motivates this message.
I propose that, if no significant progress is made by the end of July 2024, a message is sent to NLnet asking them for advice on how to proceed. Letting them know that although every task is still relevant today, it turned out that nobody was available to work on them in the past 18 months. It should also be mentioned that other people were invited to participate but declined.
It would not be fair to NLnet to wait until 1 December, knowing that the chance of completing the tasks are close to non-existent. There is a time limit to the funding they can distribute because it originates from the EU. That happened with the previous grant, for the same tasks and NLnet found themselves with an unexpected excess of fund and forced to deal with it at the very last minute. This is not how this grant should be completed and not fair to NLnet.
Canceling the grant is not the outcome any of us would have hoped for, I’m sure of that. But life is not just about good news and success, it is also about facing the potential for bad news and failure instead of burying our head in the sad. And in this case planning in advance could allow everyone to properly prepare and wrap up. NLnet could reuse the money to extend funding to other projects with more momentum and allow them to move further. And the beneficiaries could reset and do better the next time around.
Giving back the funds (almost all of it, 47,500€ out of 50,000€) with enough time so that NLnet can redistribute is probably something that never happens. I bet beneficiaries either wait it out until their receive notice that it is all canceled. Or they make a one time effort to match the deliverable and abandon the project shortly after, there are plenty examples of that on the net. But there was no such behavior from the beneficiaries of this grant and the 2,500€ that were awarded funded a feature that is key to federation and has been used, maintained and shipped in every Forgejo release published in the past year, user blocking.
While I think all beneficiaries should prepare for this unpleasant outcome, NLnet may have advice to give them a third chance in case the 1 December 2024 deadline is not met. But the time for negotiations is in the past and following their advice will be the right thing to do in any case.