NLnet grant application for federation (deadline October 1st, 2021)

Bonjour @zeripath & @techknowlogick,

It’s been over a month (October 1st) since the proposal was submitted. I wonder if you heard from NLNet since?

Cheers

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Following this issue. Thanks for takinbg this on-board.

I’m told no answer was received just yet. This is unusual delay (more than 6 weeks) but could be explained because NLnet (in their own words) “is recovering from frantic proposal writing to secure future funding for NGI Zero over the last couple of month”.

It is worth sending an email to double check the delay is nothing to worry about: they are very responsive to that kind of short question.

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There was mention on the tracker that the grant was rejected. I posted to NGI0 on fediverse to ask more info.

@techknowlogick @zeripath have you heard from NLnet about the grand application?

I stumbled upon a NLnet application sent at the same time for another project and they got additional questions.

This means that @zeripath also received a mail with additional questions because the Gitea application made it to the second round (there are two selection rounds when applying for NLnet funding). But this mail also instructs @zeripath to not communicate publicly about it because there is no guarantee the proposal will be selected in the second round.

The alternative is that a mail notifying @zeripath that the application was denied has been sent and ended up in the spam :slight_smile:

These are only educated guess on my part: I have zero information (nor should I). I wanted to share them to clarify that it is still too early to state for sure that the application has either been approved or declined. Since there were delays in the selection process, it may take another 4 to 6 weeks before information can be made public.

Congrats on getting the grants, the adventure begins :tada:

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@zeripath @techknowlogick would you be so kind as to publish the NLnet Memorandum of Understanding, including the tasks, with the personal details redacted?

NLnet is ok with publishing the MoU as long as the money related numbers are redacted. Which I did for another NLnet MoU last summer, it’s not a lot of work at all. The upside of publishing the MoU is that I (selfishly :slight_smile: ) will be able to plan ahead my own work regarding federation with Gitea depending on what it contains.

And it will also go a long way to answer the questions people will ask (during the webinar or elsewhere) in the range “what will this grant be used for exactly?”.

Discussion from the chat room:

@techknowlogick: Still working on the mou, so nothing to share (yet)
@zeripath We’re still working on it - we’ll mostly be taking the plan.md you so kindly wrote up but my focus right now is on getting https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/pull/17957 in as it’s holding up the 1.16.0-RC1
@dachary Ah, it’s fine then. Note that there is no need to stick to any pre-made plan. Whatever makes sense / seems doable now will be fine as long as it contributes to the end goal. Can I suggest creating a hedgedoc somewhere to work on that together? I’m motivated to contribute because it will allow me to align my work with yours. Since NLnet is shy about sharing the actual amounts allocated to a project, it can be done with percentages instead (per task that is). And everything else can be publicly shared.
@techknowlogick We have one setup right now, let me sanitize a few things then I can send it over.

Hello, I’m from the ForgeFlux project(external activity pub federation for Gitea, GItLab, GitHub and SourceHut). We are forking the original ForgeFed specification as it’s inactive and only partially complete.

We are wondering if Gitea would like to participate in the specification’s development.

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@zeripath @techknowlogick, since the proposed workplan was included in the application in September 2021 I gained experience and learned a few things:

  • It is ok to extensively rework the list of tasks as long as it is in the boundaries of the application. This is specially important when months passed since the application and the context changed.
  • It is ok to add signatories to the Memorandum of Understanding: each of them can send a Request for Payment on an individual task.
  • It is much more convenient to use a spreadsheet to keep track of what was done and what was paid.
  • The deliverables for each task must be something like a merged pull request, a blog post, the recording of a videoconference. It cannot be the log of a discussion or a chat, for instance.

The roadmap/milestones for other people working on Gitea federation in 2022 is now available:

Based on these, I propose to rework the initial workplan and transform it into a spreadsheet that can be conveniently attached to the Memorandum of Understanding in Annexe I: Project plan.

Here is the draft workplan, as a spreadsheet. I think it makes sense, is a reasonable workload for the duration of the project and would provide a solid foundation for federation within Gitea.

There is no money amount (since NLnet wants to keep the reserved amount confidential) but percentages. By modifying the red cell in the spreadsheet, the actual amounts will be displayed. Here is an example of how it shows with an hypothetical reserved amount of 50,000€:

I suggest that a few other people are added as signatories to the Memorandum of Understanding so that they can be paid directly (without an intermediary) if they do something. It would not compel them to deliver anything. If they do nothing they will not get any money. For instance it would make sense if @cjslep and @lunny signed the MoU. @cjslep may participate in the go-fed integration. @lunny may participate in the federation related refactor.

@techknowlogick @zeripath would you be so kind as to update this thread with the workplan that was submitted to NLnet? I’m working on my own roadmap this week and it would be great if I can make sure it is properly aligned with yours :slight_smile:

We are still working with NLnet to finalize the MoU, and will hopefully be able to post it once everything is signed.

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Would you be so kind as to publish (here or anywhere convenient) the messages and documents related to this work on the MoU for transparency purposes? With private information redacted, of course (names, addresses, bank details). In the context of another project, NLnet agreed to full transparency on the condition that the € amounts associated with each task are also redacted so you will want to do that too.

It will be an opportunity for me or other people to provide feedback or help overcome a difficulty. Two months is an unusually long delay to finalize a workplan: the one I worked on last September took less than a week. That leads me to think help may be welcome, but that’s just an educated guess on my part :slight_smile:

We’ve received feedback from them, and re-submitted with changes at the beginning of March, and are awaiting either a signed MoU, or additional feedback. We’ve been in contact with them about other matters, such as getting in contact with the security review folk, so I don’t think they’ve forgotten about us. The delay during February was due to a personal issues that occupied me during that month and prevented me from (among other things) updating the document and sending it back to them.

We all have unexpected issues interfering, I understand absolutely :slight_smile: Could you please copy/paste here or somewhere public the exchanges and the current workplan for transparency purpose? That would also allow someone else to help avoid further delays. I’m motivated to help in any way I can to get federation moving and I’m probably not the only one :rocket: Let’s do this together!

as mentioned in today’s call, the MoU has been signed, and I will now post it (properly redacted of course).

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