Received an update from NLnet to revise the workplan. I’ll get to it right away. I don’t think we need another meeting as I’ll shuffle the tasks rather than re-define them.
Hi all,
Thanks for the detailed plan. It looks ambitious! We would love to not distract you from the real work, but we have a couple of comments and suggestions first.
Firstly, with so many contributors and tasks, it would help if you could cut up the tasks (especially the first one) into smaller tasks, or subtasks within a task, that each have an associated budget. Unfortunately, it also does not work for us to list several possible subtasks and say “Some of them may not be completed in time depending on their difficulty”. While we understand your need for flexibility, we need a plan with clear tasks and a budget on each, so that we have an agreed amount to donate you upon completion of each (sub)task.
We therefore suggest you choose a feature set that you are mostly confident you will implement, rather than the full feature wishlist. (Be realistic in ambitions; better make the core features work reliably than have many features implemented sloppily.) Then if your plans change later in the project based on progressing insight, you can suggest an amendment to the MoU. Would that work for you?
If you wish, you could already include ‘alternative’ tasks. The sum of tasks could thus go beyond the total budget, which gives you some flexibility in which tasks to pursue without needing an amendment. If the project advances well, some open tasks could also be considered for a subsequent grant, or perhaps contributors could apply in parallel for a separate grant for specific features (e.g. moderation features, global/federated search, …).
Then, some more specific points:
- It is nice that you include a ‘checklist’ of what results/deliverables to point us to, which you call “milestones”. We tend to use the word milestone for subtasks (as each milestone can have an amount associated to it), so to avoid confusion perhaps you could move these checklists up into the corresponding task descriptions (for lack of a better place).
- We notice a duplication between task 1 and task 5: both include the same ForgeFed tasks. Also, you might like to split task 5 in a forgefed and go-ap part?
- Another part of task 1 is migrations; perhaps worth turning into a separate task too? We also wonder how you plan for this to work. Will the git repositories be cloned via git, but orchestrated via ActivityPub or otherwise? (Also, migrating data seems something missing in the fediverse at large… we are curious if it could be addressed more generally; but perhaps that’s too ambitious.)
- Task 6 sounds like worthwhile effort, but on the edge of the scope of what we can fund, as our grants are specifically for ‘research and development’ (we are bound by the EC’s rules here). Documentation and coordination efforts are eligible costs, but community and translation work not so much. Note that we do care about these (we even have partner organisations to help you with community, diversity, and internationalisation!), but it does not fit well as a separate task in the plan. Also, for development reporting/documentation, you may want to specify concrete subtasks here in case you’d want to claim some of this work as complete before the end of the project (as an ongoing effort is never complete).
I hope this helps and we are looking forward to an updated plan. Feel free to put the plan in a pad, in email or in any format you prefer if that simplifies the drafting (no need for a signature yet), and please ask if you have further questions (we can call if it’s easier).
I would be very grateful if we could discuss and find a way that will allow you to stay with the project.