pandas has requested funding for $250,000. This will fund software development.
For ease of reference, we've expressed the work items in terms of FTEs (full-time equivalents) assuming that one FTE costs roughly $100,000. Our indirect costs would be 10% or $25,000, for our fiscal sponsor, NumFOCUS.
| Work Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Maintenance -- 1.25 FTE | $125,000 |
| Nullable Types -- 1 FTE | $100,000 |
| Total Direct Costs | $225,000 |
| Indirect Costs 10% | $25,000 |
| Total Budget | $250,000 |
The maintenance work item is similar to a work item from round one. We've been able to spend the maintenance budget paying 4-5 experienced pandas maintainers for their time. Additionally, pandas now has a team of (volunteer) triagers. We can identify active members from this team who would be able to do more if they had funding.
We do not currently have any specific individuals lined up to do the work on nullable types. That said, we have a handful of contributors who are capable of doing the work, especially if they can be compensated for the work.
We'd like to emphasize that pandas is extremely flexible with respect to the amount of funding. The maintenance work in particular is essentially unending. An FTE focused solely on pandas could probably keep up with the stream of updates to the project, but paying down the debt we've accumulated in the backlog of issues will take even more time. To that end, we're happy to work with the foundation to get a budget that works for everyone. Any amount of funding for maintenance helps.