Improve HPy funding?
paugier opened this issue · comments
Another subject related to #419 (with more explanation). See my whole text to understand why I raise these questions about funding.
Increase HPy funding?
The Faster CPython project is funded by Microsoft with a group of very high level developers working on it. This is great! Fortunately, HPy is also supported by a company (Oracle) as part of the Graal project.
However, given the ambition of the project and the potential positive impact for the users, the overall support of the community is still very small. It's pretty clear that to succeed and produce practical results for the end-users in few years, HPy needs more work force.
There is an Opencollective project so that it is possible to give money for HPy. However, without a clear roadmap, targets in term of how much is needed, explanation of how this money could be used and efficient fundraising campaigns, it cannot be efficient. Given the potential of the project, I'm sure that some Python users could be motivated to give a bit to the project and some companies would like to become sponsor and give money or a bit of work force. I guess that it would be possible to get enough for example to pay a developer to work full time on HPy and the HPy transition during 2 years.
It seems to me that given the potential impact of the project, we should first think about what is needed for the overall project and how much it would cost. Then, we will see how we can get this money. With good communication, HPy can get support from thousands of donors (individuals, scientific projects, companies, etc.). I guess getting "a lot of money" (actually quite reasonable amounts) and work force for the HPy project should not be an issue if competent people are involved to organize this collective funding.