Feedback request: OpenJDK Community Innovator's Challenge Grants

[Ray Gans]

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 at openjdk.java.net.

Thanks,

The OpenJDK team at Sun

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