In late October, Loïc Dachary approached me to see if I would be interested in some paid community management funded via the recent grant for forge federation. After some discussion the general shape of my role was defined and approved by the recipients of the grant.
I put forward a proposal for my work, to not only do the community management task but to share my work with other forge federation projects as they needed part-time.
With this in mind, I drafted some ideas for Community Management and Project Communication to help forge federation as a whole, which to me would be the main part of my work.
From the outset it was clear this would be a multi-faceted role, with some facets more tangible than others. The specific report milestone was merely the mechanism to facilitate payment.
This proposal in the forge friends forum was then referred to in the grant application thread and my name was added to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in mid November.
On Saturday I was informed by Loïc that the previously agreed funding for my Community Manager role would no longer be available. I and others attempted to begin a discussion about how to solve this. Loïc was adamant that the decision was made and there was nothing he could do.
This has put me in a difficult position, and I see no option but to resign.
Loïc has chosen a very narrow interpretation of the funding body's guidelines. Namely that one milestone equals one person, equals one payment. However, the funding guidelines are more flexible than this. When a project is awarded a grant by the funding body the team members who will benefit from that grant are named on the Memorandum of Understanding, and a number of deliverables are listed as milestones in that MOU. There are guidelines as to what sorts of milestones are acceptable. Milestones such as code and documentation are preferred as these are easier to measure. There are restrictions on other things that cannot be directly funded, such as travel or equipment. When a milestone is completed the project co-ordinator submits a Request for Payment (RfP) to say that a milestone has been completed.
When we, as a team, complete a milestone the project co-ordinator submits a Request for Payment (RFP) naming the beneficiaries who should receive payment for that milestone and how much should be paid to each.
How these payments are divided up is entirely at the discretion of the project co-ordinator (Loïc) at the time the RfP is submitted, so to say that it is not possible to pay for Community Management work, or other non-code deliverables is simply false. I have spoken today to the funding body, confirming that my understanding is correct and that they leave the decision of who the funds are paid to at the discretion of the coordinator.
As an analogy, consider a football team. It is made up of strikers, mid-fielders, defenders and a goal keeper. The funding body will pay for each goal scored. They do not care who on the team scored that goal, or who, precisely, touched the ball before the goal was scored. All they care is that a goal was scored, because this how progress is measured. The goal keeper is very unlikely to ever to score a goal, but most football teams seem to include one. We function as a team and join in the celebration of our goals. If the members of this project place any value on the work that non-programmers such as myself can contribute, then all that is required to fund that is the will to do so. I've successfully applied for and been involved in several EU grant-funded projects, so I know the process quite well. The funding body has no objections to this and was surprised that this approach was not being considered when I spoke to them today.
This is the same funding body that has funded, and continues to fund my work for the Librecast Project.
Over the course of the past month I have put many hours into planning, attending meetings and various public and private communications to try and push the project forward. I joined the moderation team while Forgejo was being set up, as I believe that moderation is an important part of community work. I decided to drop my participation in NaNoWriMo this month in order to be able to put more of my energy into helping launch Forgejo as part of the team. I cancelled a 30-day blogging and video project that I'd planned for Librecast as the Forgejo work seemed more urgent.
So I'm a more than a little angry that the tiny amount of funding for my work has been retrospectively pulled out from under me. It shows a lack of respect, and has broken my trust. I can't help feeling that this would never happen to a developer. I certainly hope it wouldn't.
I believe in forge federation and I was very excited by the community energy here. I was excited to be contributing to that, and I'm disappointed I will no longer be able to continue working with you. I earn my living from FOSS - it's not just a hobby. If you don't pay us community folk, we need to put our time into projects that will.
There's a bigger issue here that goes beyond this project and the small team of funded members here. A question of the sustainability of a project. It's not enough to write code. It's not enough to have the right license.
Community work is underfunded and, much like infrastructure support, underappreciated. When everything is going well, it's easy to not see the point of paying for that support. But when controversies happen in FOSS, when a project goes toxic, you can tell some things have gone wrong with the community management. Or the project never had any. Or worse, the person that was doing the soft skills in addition to the code burns out.
A community manager is an insurance against that. A lot of a community manager's work happens in private. Especially with well-being and moderation. There are no milestones for that, but it can be funded if you try.
Regardless if funding is found at some point for a community manager for Forgejo and other forge federation projects, I cannot wait for that funding to appear and hope that it doesn't disappear again. I, much like Captain Mal from Firefly, "have a powerful need to eat sometime this month."
I also want to work on a project where the one who holds the purse strings for my funding will go to bat for me and not fold at the first sign of a problem.
I wish the remaining Forgejo and Forge Federation team all the best.
Please remove me from the Forgejo team on Codeberg, the current MOU for forge federation, and the entrust email box.
Esther Payne
28/11/2022