---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ray Gans <Ray.Gans@xxxxxxx>
Date: 3 Jan 2008 08:32
Subject: Feedback request: OpenJDK Community Innovator's Challenge Grants
To: discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
As you may have heard, Sun has announced the Community Innovation Awards Program (see
http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/awards/) for several open source communities that we sponsor. The goal of this program is to foster and recognize innovation in these communities by offering grants/prizes to new efforts that will have an strong impact.
The OpenJDK program will be called the OpenJDK Community Innovator's Challenge Grants (OCICG). We want to encourage developers to collaborate and creatively solve key problems facing the OpenJDK Community, initiate new projects that innovate on the OpenJDK code base, leverage the code for new uses, develop curricula and training, and port the code to new platforms, all to further the objectives of the OpenJDK Community in developing and disseminating compatible, free software implementations of the Java SE platform. We'd also like your help to make this program effective, valuable and fun for non-Sun participants.
To implement this program, Sun will award several large grants to a few projects that can be completed by August 2008. Help us determine how to best select project proposals for consideration and allocate the money (we have approximately $175,000 to distribute).
Here is how we're thinking it should work (though this may change based on your feedback):
- On January 14, 2008 Sun will kick off the OCICG program and announce the criteria that will be used to select a set number of projects. OpenJDK participants will be encouraged to submit proposals for a project they want to work on. Proposals could be made by groups of individuals, existing F/OSS teams, companies/organizations, Java User Groups, etc.
- Proposals will be accepted until March 3, 2008. At this time the proposals will be judged by a team of people (we're thinking 2 from Sun and 3 from outside Sun). We're also thinking of accepting only seven or less proposals.
- Accepted proposals will be announced on March 17 ,2008 with all project work to be completed by August 4, 2008.
- Awards will be delivered to completed projects on August 18, 2008 with cash amounts determined by the judges. We're thinking that the most valuable projects should be awarded a larger prize than others – though all completed projects will be given a cash award. Note that no money will be available until August and all awards must be distributed at that time. Obviously, judges and Sun personnel will be ineligible for any cash awards.
Scope and Constraints
- The program will begin in January 2008 and end in August 2008.
- Since this program is technically an international contest, there are strict rules by which it must be run. For example, participation will be restricted to countries that allow these kinds of contests. We would like to make the program open to as many countries as possible, however, since every country has different laws and requirements, we cannot accommodate everyone. We won't have the exact country list until mid-January. Other rules may also apply that limit what can and can't be done as part of this program.
- Projects can only have limited dependence on Sun involvement/participation. This is for fairness across all projects. Likewise, projects cannot require a commitment by Sun for significant time/effort for success since we cannot guarantee adequate Sun resources will be available -- for example, a project to build a better bug database for OpenJDK, while very useful, would require heavy involvement by Sun personnel to integrate it with Sun's internal bug management systems.
- All project code (if any) must be contributed to Sun under the Sun Contributor Agreement (see
http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/sca.pdf
).
We are interested in what the OpenJDK community thinks about the OCICG. You can help by providing input on any of the following questions (and whatever else you'd like to comment on).
-
What kind of projects do you think would be valuable to the OpenJDK community?
- What selection criteria should be used to choose the best proposals?
- How many proposals should be accepted?
- Do you think the OpenJDK community at large should have any input into the proposal selection process?
- Who you think would make good objective judges for the program and why?
- What thoughts do you have about how the proposal selection process should be handled?
- Do you think the OpenJDK community at large should have any input into selecting projects that really excel (and be awarded larger prizes)?
- What criteria should be used to determine the payout for cash awards?
- How should abandoned or non-completed projects be handled and what should constitute a "completed" project?
- How should awards be handled for project team members who drop out or are added after a proposal is accepted?
Please send your thoughts to
discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Thanks,
The OpenJDK team at Sun
Any thoughts on putting in a proposal from the GNU Classpath team? Would there be a meaningful project we could propose for that timeframe?
--
Andrew :-)
Help end the Java Trap!
Contribute to GNU Classpath and the OpenJDK
http://www.gnu.org/software/classpath
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