Hullo, @Teq!

All these proposals excite me too =]. My order of excitement is:

1. SSB-native membership management protocol - seeing the organisations founded on the same sort of decentralised principals as scuttlebutt would be super cool, and valuable for attracting further sources of funding (through hopefully multiple organisations.) This is my top choice because having the foundations / organisations / groundwork to attract further sources of grants has the potential to grow the ecosystem further than any one task.

2. Improving routerless scuttlebutt - I've seen a few people float past the scuttlebutt IRC channel asking about ipv6 broadcast / local gossip functionality, and @micro has a clear plan about how to achieve it already. It allows more experimentation with physical / virtual networks, and increases the ways messages can be gossiped which is what is one of the things that makes scuttlebutt unique and special. It also means one more person who is familiar with the low(ish) level modules underneath the node implementation of scuttlebutt.

3. I like that ssblist builds on the work of the 'couch surfing' app, incorporating the privacy / 'governance' / PR concerns that were raised in response to that proposal. I'm a bit concerned about the broad scope of this - I'm not sure how I'd approach such a generalised feature! However, I trust @gb to do something great.

I'm very much aligned with what @happy0 wrote.

I'll just add that I'm really happy to see @elavoie apply for a grant.

I'm reall excited about all 3 of these:

• memberships : this is a vital piece of infrastructure for groups in general, and so excited it could serve both orgs and maybe private groups some day. also, big fan of @elavoie's hard work commitment
• ssb-list : low-fi, maximal personal responsibility. This feels like a fricken awesome iteration on the idea of couchsailing @gb. I would love to integrate this into Patchbay, so would love to keep in touch about how to do that when the time is right for you. gb has been around ages and I'm super excited for her to be coming back with energy and time to give!
• routerless ssb - I'm don't know network layer stuff, but this sounds like it could generate some wins on several fronts. I haven't talked with @micro much, but they seem to have put time and thought into this alread. Also, this post %tOUxBgw... is simultaneously heart warming, AND getting shit done, which is a from me

Thanks for the proposals and the feedback! I'll review this over the weekend and answer back on Monday

Selected proposals

(Andre puts on the Adjudicator Hat )

Accepted proposals

• Membership protocol
• Routerless scuttlebutt

Next step:

• Send invoice details as a private message to @dominic, either ETH address or bank details:
  • Option A: ETH address, plus mailing address for the invoice
  • Option B: bank name, bank address, account number, BIC/SWIFT code, plus mailing address for the invoice
• Create a dev diary thread in the #ssbc-grants channel
• Add your dev diary to this: %9psz2xP...

Adjourned proposals

• Listings (ssblist)

Analysis of each proposal in the next messages in this thread...

Clarify and Test-Drive A New SSB-native Membership Management Protocol

Thread: %qLI62IN...

In purpose. We are soon running out of the current SSBC Grants funds. We need to set up "SSBC Grants 2.0" with the appropriate legal structures and international mechanisms. I know Dominic and I have been talking about what's a good legal structure (e.g. association or foundation or non-profit and in which country) for Scuttlebutt, but we don't have the time for figuring this out, and it's very necessary as we look for larger grants from other organizations. For instance, currently SSBC Grants is not "our" money, because "we" is not a legal structure. So the donor organization is paying the individuals directly. We need to do better than that. This proposal is timely (urgently) necessary to work on. Suggestion how to improve in purpose: instead of just staying on process drafting on an abstract level, consider investigating the legal constraints and details in the legislation of various countries where associations might start, to gather some intel on what's out there, and provide useful info for people who might start those.

In trustworthiness. The person proposing this has already been actively working towards the goal, both in big picture planning and low-level practical tasks that take us forward. The proposer is a long-time member of the community with aligned ideals. This proposal got good votes from the community (@teq, @happy0, @arj, @mix, and no non-votes).

The proposal was accepted on the basis of urgent purpose and proved trustworthiness.

Improving routerless scuttlebutt

Thread: %svwPJjV...

In purpose. There are many parts of the lower parts of the SSB stack that need improvement, and this proposal is that. It is well aligned with use cases with community (WiFi/LAN) networks, which SSB promises to support, but currently a lot of our use cases are internet/pub centered. It supports use cases in developing countries as well. Suggestion how to improve in purpose: consider picking some people to be your "customers", e.g. Luandro and Nico Pace who are running mesh networks, try to build the tools that they need to optimize their use cases related to link-local discovery and sync, so to avoid self-serving (which is often easy).

In trustworthiness. The proposer is rather new (1 month) to the community, but has been recommended and connected with other people e.g. cel and Zelf and myf. The proposal was carefully planned, with week-by-week work tasks, well mapped. Good amount of background investigation. This proposal got good votes from the community (@teq, @happy0, @arj, @mix, @cryptix and no non-votes). Suggestion how to improve in trustworthiness: don't use grant money for mere learning, because learning is just investment into yourself, the grant is about funding projects that produce output useful for the community, see the purpose paragraph above.

The proposal was accepted on the basis of well-aligned long-term purpose and community vouched trustworthiness.

SSBList

Message: %8XJjpUn...

In purpose: Enables new ways for interaction within Scuttlebutt, which we need to open up minds beyond the typical post/vote/reply. On the other hand, listings and updates can in reality be accomplished with simple threads, the mutability would simply be a better UI or view of that data. The 'why' was mentioned as "scratching my own itch" which is not community-first in purpose, and the idea was presented too vaguely as to make it hard to assess its purpose. Suggestion how to improve in purpose: look for another common use case that the community needs which they currently use threads for, but which would benefit more from custom-built mvd-based methods. It may or may not be a listings use case, but make it community-first.

In trustworthiness: The proposer is a long-time community member. However, the month work plan is simply "work daily", there is no (e.g.) draft of a list of milestones or the obstacles that need to be overcome. The proposal also is meant to use the mutable messages project, which is currently not ready (and the last update from ev on the dev diary was 2 weeks ago). The proposal got good votes from the community (@teq, @happy0 which also noted that this proposal is too broad in scope, @arj, @mix, and no non-votes). Suggestion how to improve in trustworthiness: make a clear plan with milestones; if the proposal is mostly UI then show some design sketches; prefer to build on top of existing stable tools, not ones in flux like mvd; do some background investigation and list some references/links in the proposal.

The proposal was adjourned on the basis of vague purpose and plan. I recommend resubmitting next round (which is not far from now), improving on the topics exposed.

(Andre takes off the Adjudicator Hat )

Personal comments: all of the proposals sounded to me useful and worth pursuing, I'm personally most interested in the udp6 improvements. The listing proposal is a great idea but not a good plan, so it could be tried again. And I'm anxious to get associations up and running, so looking forward to the associations membership proposal.

hey @gb, I'll just reiterate what I told you last week when I discouraged you from applying for this grant behind the scenes:

If you apply for this grant, be ready to:

• fight for it politically until the end
• have a bullet-proof proposal
• code on the proposal until it is finished -- because even though these grants appear to be no-strings-attached money, I have a hunch they will be evaluated after the fact based on whether or not they were accomplished.

If you're prepared to do these things, you'll probably be able to get a grant in the difficult political environment that is this grant process.

@andre I agree with you about gb's proposal. I think it could be strengthened. But, keep in mind that she received absolutely no critical feedback (except from me) before being dismissed out of hand.

I also believe the other two proposals could be strengthened. It might have been more fair to everyone to push all three proposals off until they are strengthened. Micro's is a moonshoot, and I have no idea what elovie's proposal is for -- it is beyond vague.

Since you also dismissed gb's proposal based on my grant, I want to clarify a few things.

• I am working on mvd and mutable messages. They are already implemented, and 100% work. I'll invite you to try mvd at http://gitmx.com/ or clone it down to your computer and build it. If you have any issues, please post them to github or git-ssb before giving up.
• While the dev diary has been a little sparse (all three from my grant round have been), I invite you to check out my commits: https://github.com/evbogue/mvd/commits/master
• I had a family event last week, which put my programming on hold. It is very difficult to program when entertaining. But, family first.
• I intend to have my grant completed by August 20th 2018

In closing, I hope that you'll either reconsider your decision to dismiss gb's grant out of hand, it has been incredibly discouraging for her. But I told her so.

Or, consider pushing all three grants off to be fair.

@gb I'm sorry for how this feels, and I want to assure you this is not at all personal. I once rejected gmarcos a mobile-ssb-quests proposal and a few weeks later accept the same proposal but under ssbc-grants, because the proposal wasn't good for mobile-ssb-quests but was good for ssbc-grants. Also it's not a statement about your person or your skills, definitely not "strong coder skills" related (I didn't even use those words). Is definitely not a dismissal, it's an adjournment / postponement, the next round is right around the corner, and resubmissions are encouraged. Your proposal didn't pass this round because of clear reasons I wrote above, and nothing else.

I don't gain anything by being an adjudicator. All it does for me is force me to do tricky review work and hear such complaints when a proposal doesn't pass a round. My only motivation is to keep this process fair for everyone. How? By assuring that proposals transparently communicate to the community exactly how those funds will be used and the scope of the work. The Listings proposal did not answer the "How the work will be spread?" answer, it simply said "will work daily", which is not a plan. In all proposals I gave suggestions how to improve, but your proposal had significantly more suggestions for improvement, which could be done next round.

Going forwards, I'm willing to leave @dominic and @mix to vote what to do this time regarding your proposal, I'm not at all holding the final word on this, and in fact I think for the next round we should have another adjudicator.

I think there's a danger that we're trying to run this process at 100% efficiency while forgetting we're humans. This isn't that much money, maybe we should be a bit easier at giving it out when people are enthusiastic about something and less rigid / formal

generally speaking people who got the grants have done something good, even if it wasn't exactly as specced out, so what's the risk?

if I get you a document that says exactly how the funds will be used this month, will you still consider my proposal for this month's round?

@gb for fairness with others (because this is not the first ssbc-grant proposal that didn't pass) and to stay consistent with what I said before, the two options going forward are:

1. Dominic and Mix both vote for passing your proposal
2. You resubmit the proposal next round

The second option is not just about specifying how funds will be used. To reiterate what is needed:

• Look for another common use case that the community needs which they currently use threads for, but which would benefit more from custom-built mvd-based methods. It may or may not be a listings use case, but make it community-first.
• Make a clear plan with milestones
• If the proposal is mostly UI then show at least some design sketches
• Prefer to build on top of existing stable tools, not ones in flux like mvd
• Do some background investigation and list some references/links in the proposal

Not all of these need to be done, but at least more than one of these should be done in one form or another, to make a good proposal.

@elavoie You're not syncing for gb, so I'm going to reply to your message. I think it's because of the time your messages were posted out of timestamp order?

This is not helping me want to help you guys. Moreover, given that the Adjudicator role is performed entirely voluntarily, pressuring to reverse decisions may even back-fire and drive people away from trying to Adjudicate in the future for fear of public retaliation. That could kill the current ssbc-grants process.

I'm not worried about killing the current ssbc-grants process. I think that it's been poorly managed since the beginning, and has always resulted in political battles in order to push grants through. I understand that andre decided to agree to being adjudicator, so the political stress is somewhat directed at him. But, in the end the person deciding these grants has always been dominic.

It would have been a lot easier for others to chime in and complement @ev feedback on the proposal if that entire discussion about what constitutes a good proposal had been public in the first place...

I agree with you about this. The proposal processes has always been vague, so it's always been unclear what the correct way to submit a proposal is.

From my point of view now it seems there is behind-the-scene machinations about how to get grant money and then public outrage when the preferred outcome is not achieved. This is counter-productive and frustrating.

As for behind-the-scenes, gb and I live in the same apartment, so we have discussions. I did discourage her from applying, because I knew that it would be a political battle. As for other behind-the-scenes mechinations, I have no idea what conversations are happening in NZ around these grants. If there are other conversations happening, feel free to make them public.

The next round of proposal requests is two weeks away. The next decision will be four weeks away. That leaves plenty of time to rework the proposal while being close enough that it does not completely kills the momentum of your idea.

But there were three proposal slots, and three proposals. Why was gb's scuttled, and yours let through?

Specifically to @ev, there is not enough money available in grants now to be a long term revenue strategy for all people making contributions. My proposal is a step in facilitating the creation of many associations world-wide specifically to increase the money and resources available to everyone. If you want more details about it, let's have a discussion.

If I hear you correctly you're saying your proposal is proposing to get us more money to give to more people. How do you propose that you'll get these funds?

On a different topic, how can we make sure @elavoie is syncing for everyone?

@gb please don't argue with the adjudicator after they've made their decision. It's seriously quite emotionally exausting to be the adjudicator. There are also many people who have been told no and later yes. A big part of collaboration skills is how you respond to "no" - can you find a way to turn it into a yes? just arguing isn't a good way to do that, because it will tend to make it into an ego thing, and the person you are arguing with will just push back too. You should listen to @ev's advice, his collaboration skills have improved significantly over the past year.

please, just chill out till next month, and reapply.

I understand that andre decided to agree to being adjudicator, so the political stress is somewhat directed at him. But, in the end the person deciding these grants has always been dominic.

I must disagree. There have been months where I never even looked at the grants (kinda exausted from my time as adjudicator). Technically, I would have the ability to veto a grant, but I've never done that.

yah @gb, listen to me.

@dominic is right. I told you this when you were writing your grant proposal. There is no possible way for you to win this grant. This grant process has always been set up as a boys club, with all of the associated politics that go with it.

I told you so. Even though there were two proposals, and three slots, your proposal would be written off because for vague reasons. If they hadn't written you off for 'being vague', you'd have been written off for 'your personality' or 'not collaborating good enough'.

Even though only one of the proposals had anything specific, you would be written off as being vague. Just as I said, before you even got involved here, that you'd need to be able to fight these boys club politics until the end. You are 100% unable to play boys club politics, because you're a girl, sorry.

As I told you, this is case-in-point why women drop out of tech. Because a few men get all of the money, and they give it out to their friends. You've fallen for this before, and been unwilling to fight the politics until the end. You should stop now.

Give it up, you're not going to get this grant. It's already been decided that you are not going to play in this grant round. Listen to the adjudicator, he is emotionally exhausted. Give him a break, he has enough going on. Even though he probably could have just given you the grant, and then not had to play politics all week.

This isn't a democracy, it doesn't matter that beans backs you, mix backs you, teq backs you, noffle backs you, bob backs you, and whomever else in the community is willing to put in a good word backs you. Heck, I even would back you, if I thought there was any chance of you getting a grant in this impossible political environment.

In the next grant round there will be 4+ grants, put forth by people better connected than you, better coders than you, and running more in the in-crowd than you. If you push off to the next round, you will be written off because all of the projects are much more attractive than yours.

glhf,
ev

@ev,

I don't personally know you or @gb and is not up to me to judge proposals but I think you're approaching this through the wrong footing.

We all know the grants process is not perfect but it is working. I had a proposal rejected (missed the deadline for some hours, common timezone mistake), I reapplied and used that time to make my proposal better.

There are many people here offering help to @gb with her proposal. In couple weeks it is the next month already, this is good time for refining things. If some people felt that the proposal was too vague, then this extra time working with those people can help make it more clear to them.

I don't have a clue why you talk in terms of boys clubs and politics here. I've been working with FOSS foundations and been grantee from large foundations before, the kind of stuff that happens there is politics, this here is actually quite welcoming.

@ev I think you're making a disservice to @gb by discouraging her from applying. You're the only one here that is saying that she will never receive a grant. Besides you, all I see are offers of help and requests from reapplication. If people didn't want it, they'd never ask for her to reapply.

These accusations of sexism are quite serious and I am a bit offended by them as some who has been a part of the grant process. Not only you're implying people have no morals, but you're both diminishing GB and everyone else who ever received a grant.

When I received my grant, I didn't knew anyone here. I am not the brightest coder, most of you are better than I am in this. I don't speak perfect English or walk with influential people. And I got a grant because I listened to feedback, used my time to make my proposal better and reapplied.

Stop pushing this conspiracy theory, it is FUD. Instead focus your attention and action into making things better, the advise you should be giving anyone here, regardless of gender, is that it is quite frustrating to be rejected, but you shouldn't give up, you're not alone here, and people can help.

Heck, to get funding from Ford Foundation, I've spent a whole year trying to convince them. We got to show tentative proposals, get criticized, rework, re-apply, for a whole year! We didn't get to call them sexists, conspiratory, clubs... we used their input to make our stuff better and so should you.

@gb, we want to see you succeed.

+1 to this. Working a heap of part time jobs is really hard.
It sucks you didn't get more input on your proposal. @gb please @mention me (and others who've expressed their support) if you propose something for the next round, because I would love to explore your ideas with you in public, so people can get excited together with you about your vision, and perhaps bring some exciting visions of their own that you might also enjoy.

@ev I'm still keen to work with you. If you choose to make this subjective space about fihgting against rather than fighting with, I think you're likely to experience more of that. I'm keen on some "Fuck you" vibe AND some "hey what was the misunderstanding here, how we be more awesome together?" vibe

@andrestaltz thank for the effort, anergy, care, empathy, thoughtfulness you've put in Adjudicating the last 3 months. It's not easy, and it's a realy gift

Thanks folks for joining the discussion , and I'd like to help disprove "politics and rumors of conspiracy".

ev said: As for other behind-the-scenes mechinations, I have no idea what conversations are happening in NZ around these grants.

I'm not in NZ, never have been. This round of SSBC grants was organized by Teq and adjudicated by me. I don't think Teq is in NZ either, but it wouldn't matter anyway.

ev said: Even though there were two proposals, and three slots, your proposal would be written off ...

This argument of numAcceptance < numSlots was brought up a few times as an act of excluding a person, but in fact there is no requirement to fill in all the 4 or 3 slots per month with any remaining proposals, and in fact in May there were 4 slots but I passed only 3 proposals, rejecting 2 proposals (both from men!) %CnkbBEj...

Like software tests, you can never be sure that your software is bug-free, so with group communication you can never be sure that others are not secretly conspiring against you. One can always be paranoiac enough to come up with a plausible argument for conspiracy.

Going forwards, this discussion becomes less and less relevant the closer we come to the next SSBC grants. It's that often that it reduces the drama involved when a proposal is postponed. Simultaneously, I can attest that there are multiple other grant efforts going on to bring in more money from various organizations. Some from the EU, some from Ethereum foundation, from Blockstack, from crowdsourcing. Some of these got rejected by those organizations, some have good potential to pass. We don't want this current SSBC grants process to be the only money bucket and Dominic to be the only head, so let's keep in mind the big picture here. There's lot of people involved with various motivations and processes and in various countries.

I'm with you guys! I so want to be wrong about being right about this grant process. I'm part of this grant process, because I got one of the grants, so by being right I'm criticizing my own participation in the process. No one wants to have to criticize themselves!

Nothing anyone has said on this thread has been able to prove me wrong about my prediction that gb's grant would be dismissed out-of-hand. Even though the other two grants have an equal level of enthusiasm to hers.

The gist of the argument @gb and I were having when she submitted this proposal is still the following:

• they won't give you the grant
• you'll have to fight the politics until the end
• you'll need a bullet-proof proposal

Finally, and the part I'm most nervous about, is that when she gets the grant she'll have to actually code on it. Time is money, money is time. Being given the time to work on becoming a better coder is without a doubt what gb is most excited about. I'm nervous because she might actually have the resources to improve as a coder, if given the opportunity. What I'm most nervous about is that because I do not publish or commit code under my significant others' public/private key, all of her commits will be hers! Writing her own code will be empowering!

Not being given opportunities is how women are excluded from tech. Let's all keep in mind that women and minorities are at an extreme disadvantage because they are not encouraged from a young age to sit in front of computers in order to learn how to code.

We're in a privileged position as a small group of white men, let's not abuse that privilege. Because I'm a white boy who grew up in Chicago in the 90s, I have 15 years more coding experience than gb does. She got her first computer in college, there was a computer in my house when I was born. Sometimes I forget this, and gb has to remind me why I'm a better coder than her -- it's because I've had more access and opportunities than her.

By giving gb this grant, we'll give her the opportunity to step back from her part time job for a couple of months, and in doing so she'll be able to dedicate her time to learning, growth, and completing the project that she proposed.

Don't get me wrong, I support @micro's grant. Routerless scuttlebutt is a very cool idea. I'm very enthused about #bacalus. Just as I intend to help @gb accomplish her grant (with advice and instruction, not coding it for her) when she is given it, I also intend to help @micro accomplish his grant when he is given it. This grant could change everything! For me, it doesn't matter that @micro joined the network four weeks ago, I trust him to do good with his grant.

But I maintain my position that @elavoie's grant is more vague than gb's grant. If her grant is to be dismissed for being vague, then his should be as well. To be fair, the only person who should get a grant this round is @micro. Then we can give both @gb and @elavoie a chance to strengthen their proposals for next round.

Let me reiterate: I am locking arms with you guys! I want gwen to stand down, give up on this round, and work towards strengthening her proposal to be rejected in the next round.

The only problem is that I have very little control over her as gb is her own person, and she's intent on proving me wrong about this grant process and the whole boys' club thing. Y'all are her friends too, not just my friends! She doesn't want me to be right about us.

If she'd been written off for her coding skills, perhaps she'd taken it better. I didn't predict that she'd be written off for her coding skills, I predicted she'd be written off for vague reasons.

The other trouble is I asked her, as she was submitting this proposal 'are you willing to fight the politics until the end?' and she said "yes!". By giving up this round she has to not just concede to the adjudicator, and the arch-adjudicator, she also has to concede to me. We'd be right! She'd be wrong.

If there is anything that can be said of gb, is that she is stubborn. I don't think gb is willing concede to me on this issue. But we'll see, maybe I can convince her behind-the-scenes to give up and submit for the next round in a peaceful and supportive way.

However, it might be easier for the adjudicator and the arch-adjudicator and me to all agree to stand down, give her the grant, and trust that she will do good with it based on her experience working with the scuttlebutt community over the past 2+ years. Then we can end the politics now, and gb get straight to work improving her coding skills with the resources granted to her.

In the meantime, we can all gather together to support and strengthen her proposal -- whether or not it is approved this round or next.

+1 to this. Working a heap of part time jobs is really hard. It sucks you didn't get more input on your proposal. - @mix

I appreciate your willingness to continue to fight against this grant decision @mix. You have a lot of political pull on this network, would you be able to backchannel with the adjudicator and the arch-adjudicator and pressure them into changing the outcome of this grant round?

@ev I don't appreciate what you're doing. This feels like a sowing of discord and misinformation. @gb's proposal being rejected, complete with concrete requirements for the next cycle, doesn't strike me as a sexist move. Other things don't add up that you're saying: if the grants process is a "boy's club of friends", @mix is definitely a part of it (hypothetically; stay with me), and yet @mix has also been backing @gb here in glowing terms, and yet wasn't able to get @andrestaltz to change his mind either. - @noffle

I don't appreciate what I'm doing here either! But there is no misinformation here, I don't think we should think that this grant process is anything different than @dominic giving money to his friends, and offloading some responsibility onto an adjudicator. By not overruling andre, dominic has also rejected gb's grant out-of-hand. He should also reject elavoie's grant based on this criteria.

I've gotten the opportunity to know many of the folks involved here, and they truly don't strike me as the sort of people that you're describing. @ev and @gb, I've met you both on multiple occasions, and you know I really like the cut of your jibs: I love your energy and enthusiasm and vision and sense of adventure. I like you both a lot. However: there is no malicious quest of vengeance here to persecute either of you. Like @mix and the others here backing @gb, we want to see you succeed. Truly. But lashing out when someone says "no" is making it really hard. Trust that there is no malice: there isn't. Bring your proposal to the next round and let's see what happens. - @noffle

I love our sense of adventure and enthusiasm and vision too! I'm with you man, we're both trying to convince gb to bring her proposal to the next round. The thing we disagree about is I think gb should drop out, because there is no possibility that this process is ever going to give her a grant. Why waste the emotional energy trying to work within this hierarchical system where she can be rejected even with all of the enthusiasm and trust that she has built during her 2+ years contributing in various ways to the scuttlebutt ecosystem?

work on them regularly within your own personal constraints, energy, and time commitment without burning out; - @elavoie

Both gb and I have contributed in positive and regular ways to this open source community since the original scuttlebutt prototype, I don't see any reason for you to doubt this.

But don't ever again turn a part of the community against another one to force your preferred outcome. If you build trust in advance, it will be there when your proposal will be judged. - @elavoie

I don't see any reason to believe that gb doesn't have the trust of the community. She has been here longer than you, got more enthusiastic endorsements for her proposal than yours, and her proposal has a more concrete and actionable plan than yours.

Speaking strictly for myself (and not gb, because she has not suffered these political setbacks), there are only two reasons that I have less clout within ssbc community than others. First, I decided to use css in my client rather than mcss, which resulted in a fork and a now-resolved dispute. I still believe css is a better choice for styling a client because everyone knows how to code css. Second, I've critiqued this grant process since it began. Both of these actions have cost me brownie points over time. I would have been better off not bringing up concerns when I had them. However, I still believe that any welcoming community should embrace and even encourage criticism. I'm prepared to be docked more brownie points for the previous sentence.

Stop pushing this conspiracy theory, it is FUD. Instead focus your attention and action into making things better, the advise you should be giving anyone here, regardless of gender, is that it is quite frustrating to be rejected, but you shouldn't give up, you're not alone here, and people can help. - @soapdog

This is not a conspiracy theory, it's just my opinion that in absense of a formal structure for this grant process we have ended up with a defacto boys club that is excluding women and minorities. I hate to say this, because I'm in the club! I don't want to have to agree with @serapath. I agree with you man! Let's figure out how to make this process inclusive, before it's too late!

Like software tests, you can never be sure that your software is bug-free, so with group communication you can never be sure that others are not secretly conspiring against you. One can always be paranoiac enough to come up with a plausible argument for conspiracy. - @andre

Why are so many people talking about conspiracies on this thread? I did not bring up the conspiracy thing, elavoie did. If there's a conspiracy, I haven't accussed anyone of it or been privy to it. In regards to off-chain conversations, I only let everyone in on the discussion gb and I had when she was writing her initial proposal.

Going forwards, this discussion becomes less and less relevant the closer we come to the next SSBC grants. It's that often that it reduces the drama involved when a proposal is postponed. Simultaneously, I can attest that there are multiple other grant efforts going on to bring in more money from various organizations. - @andre

I think we should seriously consider improving this grant process before accepting any more money this way. 10 months of fighting over grants has me as emotionally exhausted as you are. Not to mention that development on ssb has mostly stalled due to political in-fighting over an amount of money that is less than one Facebook employee's salary for a year. I continue to be 100% in support of dominic just taking money and giving it to his friends, without pretending that we've created some sort of more advanced process than that. I am also up for figuring out a way to create an improved grant process that is fair to everyone. An improved process would result in less politics. Going back to being an unfunded open source project would also result in less politics.

In addition, I want to encourage you to consider that you are 100% in a position to prove me wrong about this current grant process, and you haven't said anything towards that direction yet. Before you go to bed tonight, you could reverse your decision and give gb the opportunity to be paid to work on secure scuttlebutt for the first time in 2+ years. 5+ years if you count the time when she and I helped @dominic install Arch Linux on his computer at a coffee shop in Oakland in 2013 when we were all staying at @johnny and @substack's house.

--

In closing, I agree 100% with beans here: "generally speaking people who got the grants have done something good, even if it wasn't exactly as specced out, so what's the risk?" Let's approve g's proposal, then we can all chill out!

Finally, I want to thank everyone for having this difficult discussion. Difficult discussions prove that the ssb platform works. In any other environment, I'd have been long ago shadow-banned, and that is why we're all winning here. If scuttlebutt is a success there will be many more powerful difficult discussions that happen here in the coming days.

Centralized, authoritarian social has suspended difficult discussions for far too long. We've liberated them. For that I raise my iced coffee to everyone.

I'll help you for next month @gb

I don't think you've wanted to hear "no, but please come again next month" from either Andre nor Dominic. I don't see some epic fight of injustice, at worst I see miscommunication, mistrust, and offers of support around trying again in a couple of weeks.
I wish you could trust to let people support you for next month, and work with you. My fear is you persist with winning some grant conversation but end up losing a bunch of friends and support ... which is a long term lose. I also fear you won't hear what I'm saying and write it off.

I'm withdrawing from this thread now.

@elavoie on the Maintenance Fund, more specifically, there was a rough decision to cap this current pattern of grants at $160k spend, and to allocate the rest of the $40k to maintenance. No idea how that's going to happen yet, I think it's blocked on @dominic handing responsibility of that to someone.

@teq I appreciate that you took the time to moderate this discussion, and I've heard your request to move further conversations to a new thread.

However, I don't think this issue is resolved for @gb in a sufficient way. In specific, her proposal has still been dismissed without a valid reason. She's been encouraged to participate next time, but I continue to believe she will also be dismissed next round in a similar way. Or, worse there are four sexier grants in the wings right now being prepared to make sure that she has no chance whatsoever of winning.

I've reread this thread a number of times over the past few days, and it occurred to me that the scariest thing that's been said so far was this:

I wish you could trust to let people support you for next month, and work with you. My fear is you persist with winning some grant conversation but end up losing a bunch of friends and support ... which is a long term lose. I also fear you won't hear what I'm saying and write it off.

You're welcome to scroll up and figure out who said that.

I want to point out that the wording above is exactly what I meant when I said "this is case-in-point why women drop out of tech." and when I said "in absense of a formal structure for this grant process we have ended up with a defacto boys club that is excluding women and minorities.. It was also said after I raised the red flag! Saying things such as "end up losing a bunch of friends and support", and directing them at women and minorities, is not encouraging at all. It reinforces my initial discussion with gb, where I asked her to consider not applying for the grant at all, because there is no chance she will get it. What is worst of all, is the above quote came from someone who also claimed to support her proposal, making it all the more hurtful.

By fighting for this grant decision to change, @gb is standing up for herself. Threatening to exclude her even more is not ok. I'll encourage the author right now to clone down mvd and edit his post to say something encouraging instead of defeating. If not, I'll make sure to have a pull-request into patchcore by August 1st, so he can edit it then.

I hope that we can continue to discuss this issue as a community, instead of working to discourage @gb from participating in the project. Maybe I feel this way because I work for a San Francisco-based company, and we just finished pride month. Maybe I feel this way because I used to be a fat kid, and you get picked on a lot when you grow up fat. Or maybe I just think we're all in a privileged position as competent programmers and we should both appreciate that privilege and use it to encourage people who don't have as many opportunities to thrive within the scuttlebot community. I think we lose a lot by playing by invisible rules that only a few privileged individuals know how to navigate.

I realize that this might be challenging to continue talking about, being that the above quote says that we might "end up losing a bunch of friends and support", but I think that we will be a more inclusive community if we do continue to discuss the issue. There's no need to star this post, but you might consider that if you don't then you're afraid of being excluded too.

--

I, for one, have agreed to make one change behind the scenes. When @gb's asked "With all respect, and I mean it because I respect the ish out of you, stop telling me I can't learn to code." I heard her.

I've committed to supporting her in her quest to become a better coder. To that end, I encouraged her to consider not getting another part-time job as a server. We're good with our current part-time jobs, there's no need to overwork for minimum wage right now.

Coding is a skill that will last her a lifetime, working in a restaurant is a dead-end job that no one wants to do for the rest of their lives.

Let's win this grant process for everyone by giving @gb the opportunity to be paid to code on ssb for the first time, instead of falling into the default of excluding her for vague reasons.

oh, I should have feared being misunderstood, not ignored. sigh.
I wasn't meaning any threat, I don't have anything to threaten. I was reading what I see in the room, and what I see is the path forward that is most likely to be 'success' for gb, and for myself supporting her.
Gb is welcome to listen to or disregard my opinion of course.

"This now appears to be nothing more than a clumsy hustle, intended to ensure @gb gets a grant, if not this month then next, by preemptive accusations of all manner of prejudices and dirty dealings should @gb not be successful. - @ibob

I don't think gb will get the grant this month or next month, my dilemma is that she won't accept the vague rejection of her proposal. I haven't made any accusations of dirty dealings or prejudices, I pointed out that saying that gb will "end up losing a bunch of friends and support" is not encouraging or inclusive at all.

I think a clear and specific rejection of her proposal would give her clues as to how to prepare for the next round, as well as clarity around why her proposal was dismissed in the first place. gb's at work right now, so I'm not able to tell you if she'd be willing to accept a clear and specific rejection of her proposal. However, I do believe putting together a specific rejection letter could be a step in the right direction. Better yet, let's have it signed by the three adjudicators.

"I see myself as a bystander and am entirely ambivalent as to where these or any other grants go. However, I think it sad that folk here, trying honestly to do a good job, have to put up with this sort of garbage." - @ibob

I don't think you're a bystander @ibob, you're @mix's dad! However, I do think that it could help this political process if you both encouraged @gb to continue coding, as well as encouraged the three adjudicators of this process to put together a more formal and specific dismissal of ssb-list. Right now, all we're going on over here is 'vague', which is a vague rejection.

"I was reading what I see in the room, and what I see is the path forward that is most likely to be 'success' for gb, and for myself supporting her." @mixmix

I don't think I misunderstood anything about your saying that gb might "end up losing a bunch of friends and support" by standing up for herself.

@ev you are not supporting @gb by saying she won't get a grant next month. Especially since @andrestaltz and others have encouraged her to apply for August.

If you want a reason for not being accepted this month here is one: Andre was entrusted to make this decision, and he did. Someone else might have made a different decision, but this month it was his decision. I have not interferred with other adjudicator's decisions, but I have enforced process. And well, appealing the decision of the adjudicator is not part of the process.

Also, I think, how someone reacts to a "no" is very telling. If you wanna learn to code well, I can tell you, it's not just about code. It's also about working with other coders and negioating with them. Someone who's great at code and shit at people is not very useful. You are framing this a very competitive way. You use words like "politics" "win" "battle" "fight". But really, we all want roughly the same thing: success of a decentralized internet. So look at it the other way "cooperation" "collaboration" "working together".

I'm not gonna post again in this thread. I consider this month concluded. I'm gonna process payments to the grants selected for this month. @gb please apply for august, and take some of the offers for help.

I may have negotiated a deal that @gb can agree to. I'll post more soon.

I've negotiated a peace deal.

It isn't as sweet as the peace deal I had negotiated before, but that was before @elavoie told @gb to 'calm down, go cook, and do yoga'.

If gb agrees to this peace deal, she will drop the Hobbesball for the rest of this round.

1. gb will drop out of the August grant process, and agree with me. There's no way she will win, so playing will just cause the arch-adjudicator more emotional labor as he tries to find a new neutral-looking adjudicator that will do his bidding for the last three grants
2. The July grant for ssb-list will remain unpaid It can be paid out of the maintenance fund when the adjudicators realize their mistake, whether this is two months or two years from now. Upon receiving the grant, gb will work on ssb-list until completed
3. I will continue to encourage gb to learn to code. I will do this by writing a once-per-week series on how to code with ssb, until I've taught her everything I know about coding on ssb
4. gb will agree to my illustration of the invisible hierarchy within the ssbc: @dominic works for @mix, not the other way around. This means that this grant process has been run by mix since the beginning. This isn't a boy's club, it's the mix club. When dominic got his small bag of money, he passed it to mix, and we've been playing mix's game of Calvinball ever since. When mix told gb that she would 'lose friends and support', he meant that his organization was threatening her -- that includes dominic. For the purposes of this document, we'll call mix's organization "mixspiral"
5. since part of the problem here has been that gb has been told "you're on the team!!!! we love you!!!" for the past two years, she has also agreed to retire from the ssbc at the end of July
6. I will remain in the ssbc until the two features I want in ssb are implemented. If you want me to leave faster, help me implement these two features faster by contributing code towards these goals. The two features are on my fridge, photo below:

/ev picks up the Hobbesball

The only person who has to agree to the above terms is gb. @gb, if you agree, please acknowledge below.

@ev Here's the photo:

@ev

Is there somewhere I can read more about these features? A full node in the browser makes sense to me, but I'm not completely clear on what "delete feeds" means.

@christianbundy

• delete feeds
• holygrail of distributed awesomeness

Being able to delete feeds will allow people who run sbot to comply with legal requests to delete content from their machines. There isn't a lot of illegal content on sbot right now, but that will probably change as the network grows.

A full node in the browser (the holygrail of distributed awesomeness) would allow everyone to run sbot without needing to install Node.js or run software on their local machines.

@noffle hey! This peace deal is more about getting @gb and I onto the same page so that we can chill out and stop arguing about this.

Now I can go back to cooking, and she can go back to yoga-ing -- as @elavoie suggested that we do. I can get back to coding, and she can get back to learning how to code. That's a win for both of us, and perhaps all of us, I think.

Now the grant process can fizzle out as the last three grants are issued to mixpiral folks, and the rest of the money can be transferred into a maintenance fund where it will be given to mix's friends.

@noffle You may want to consider that you are also not a part of mixspiral, and that your voice was not heard during this process either. While you supported gb's proposal, it still remains unfunded.

Well I did not know both of @ev and @gb were on the ssbc. - @elavoie

Yup, we've both been working on this project for 5+ years. Scuttlebutt was a non-functional baby, and cyphernet was a twinkle. We've come this far, ssb is almost finished!

My voice was heard. - @noffle

Yes, that's true. I also heard you.

Hey @gb, sure, that's an honorable request, and considering that I'm not going to adjudicate next round (we're still figuring out who it will be), by giving you feedback I'm not anymore in the position of a "judge", it's now just a comment on how to clarify a proposal.

What

Let's say I'm growing basil. Which I am. And I have way too much of it and I want to give some away. Let's imagine we share some geographical space. And you need some basil for a pasta dish you're making tonight. Or, you enjoy basil so much you want to get a bunch to dangle upside down and dry out so you can use whenever you want.

I want to list the basil on #ssblist and, using #mvd (the mutable message aspect, specifically) announce when the basil is available and update the listing when it's no longer available.

This is an update to the grant I proposed for #couchsailing. It takes a more list approach, where both parties are responsible for acknowledging the listing being true to what was said about it, and the person making the listing is responsible for acknowledging when it has changed (if it does, indeed, change).

The first paragraph describes the problem you want to solve. So far so good.

The second paragraph is what I would describe as vague. Since this is the 'Why' section, it could have described ssblist, e.g. "ssblist is a ___ with ___ for doing ___ in a unique way that employs ____". Instead, "I want to list the basil on # ssblist" is a user use case. So overall, paragraph 2 is still just describing the problem, not the solution, except for the mention of mutable messages. At this point, the picture I have of the solution is one use case and one possible software dependency.

The third paragraph describes two more use cases, about acknowledgement, but it's not clear how the solution for that would work. Would it utilize the current like button? Would it be another kind of ack (new ssb msg type)? Would it be a textual reply? How would this be perceived by the user, are you intending to build the UI for all this, or just a module that takes care of the data handling but has an API that UIs can use?

The 'What' section is supposed to give the reader an accurate idea of the end product of this proposal, but I'm still not sure if this project would involve any UI work or not, and in what medium would it be delivered (web? mvd? patchcore? patchbay? mobile?).

Why

I want to work on this grant because it is scratching my own itch. I have a spare bedroom in the apartment I'm renting and it's walking distance from the airport. I want to list it here. I want to be able to host visitors and review their visit and have them review their time here. A la that site where you list things, you are responsible for what happens, there is literal zero tech support/customer service. It's not that I don't dig customer service. It's just that I think this is a network where high levels of personal responsibilty course through the very bits. And that is what I want to build on with this grant money.

This section accurately represents the motivation, and it's clear, but as I argued before, I think it's better to focus on doing something that the community considers useful, instead of something self-serving (you talked about scratching your own itch so that's why I'm describing it as self-serving). It can sometimes be both, but it's better to make sure the former is going to happen, not necessarily the latter.

How are you going to spread your 1 month equivalent of work?

When I want to do something well I commit to doing it daily for an entire month. I started playing guitar last month and have touched the guitar literally every day since. It's good. I'm terrible at it. But what if I could have gotten a guitar from someone in our local network instead of buying a new one? That would have been cool.

I'm committing to working on #ssblist daily for the month of July.

I'll highlight that the question there was "How are you going to spread", but your answer was as if the question was "How committed are you". Paraphrasing the question with more clarity: "Given that you will have 30 days of funded work time, how many days approximately are you going to assign for milestone A, milestone B, milestone C". The answer could shown us a drill down of the tasks involved to get the proposal done, and the time resources attached to those tasks.

Bonus element

I've been thinking about rapport and the in person element of this network. For instance, many of you know I've met many ssbers in person, so what if part of #ssblist (by the way, if you say it fast it sounds like 'es es blissed, which is pretty great, right?') is a rapport score or a I can vouch for this because it happened in person?

And! I had this other idea, which is if there's payment involved you can indicate that the payment was received in public by pushing a kaching! button when the payment lands. Just a bonus side idea.

I'll start on it July 1. July is my birth month. What better month to rock out?

Also! Now that I've signed a lease and will be steady in this apartment until next year, travel will not hamper my undertaking. I'll pull off the in person day job to focus on this in the event I'm approved for the grant.

I've striked through the parts that (albeit give context and are good to have) didn't give me information to clarify what the proposal is. What remains is that bonus elements (which I assume would happen only after the main proposal is done, but we don't have a definition of done because the milestones and the What section are not specified) would be some kind of rapport score and vouching interaction, although it is not specified what would the rapport score contain, and what is it that you mean by rapport actually because the dictionary says this, and how would the "score" be calculated (or what factors affect the score), or is the score not a number? How would vouching work? I understand the "kaching" button as a way of acknowledging, but otherwise this section also raises more questions that are left unanswered.

Thanks for asking for feedback and I hope this shows what kind of questions were going on in my mind when I was reviewing the proposal, and usually when there are too many unanswered questions I tend to use the word vague to describe my experience, so that's where I'm coming from. Wish you the best for the next round, and happy scuttling!