Pooling contributors skills between open-source projects

Contributor & Development Discussion
1

Hi all,

Many open-source projects in the Scientific Python ecosystem have their own strengths which in my opinion are mainly attributable to their contributors skills and interests.

Yet, on the one hand, there might be maintainers/contributors might want to improve some aspects of the project they maintain but might lack and might not have time or will to gain the necessary skills to.

On the other hand, there might be maintainers/contributors who would like to help other projects with their skills or expertise but who do not know which open-source might be interested in their profile.

To my knowledge, this is a notable problem projects in the ecosystem might have come up to independently with no organisational solutionsÂą.

I think, it should be possible to have a way to match interested projects and contributors². Practically, this would mainly necessitate having some structured information about each project context and demand for skill and each people profile offer for expertise.

This needs not be complex: to me, people presenting themselves and discussing can works quite nicely, and it can simply start with responding in this thread for instance.

What do people think of this situation and of this simple proposition?

[1]: Is this true?
[2]: This thread is a follow-up on brief discussed we had with @tupui.

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2

Google Summer of Code is an attempt to a solution to this problem. I always wanted to apply for it, but to do so, you need to have some resources, for example a place and money to accept an intern and have them work comfortably.

3

I don’t want to rely on Google in any way for various reasons. But most importantly it only provides you with a pool of students for a limited time. But yes, this could be something very similar. A platform like this that where packages could propose projects and people could also propose time/skills.

I am sure there are existing tools for that. The poor man’s solution could be to have a GitHub with people opening issues for a project and getting assigned, etc.

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