Dear community,
here is a basic set of indications in order to make a proposal that can be considered by the Ada User Awards for a potential prize.
General requirements and indications
- You can make a proposal that you yourself would like to carry out and potentially be awarded for it. Or propose a project idea that you hope someone else may carry out.
- Only projects that are open source will be accepted. This decision was taken as we want as many people to benefit from the improvements.
- It does not have to be an Ada/SPARK idea or project. Depending on what is being proposed, other tools, languages or environments may end up being used more and that is fine.
- The prize will be given once the task has been selected, finalized and the committee has agreed that the results meet an acceptable degree of quality.
- More than one person can contribute to a selected project. The prize will be split between the participants, but not necessarily in an even manner, as it will depend on the final work and the difficulty carried out by each party. For this reason, we encourage collaboration and clear communication between the different parties and community.
Writing a project proposal
Your proposal should contain the following points and they should be easily identifiable:
- Make a short description of the project you are contributing to or that you would like to create.
- Indicate clearly what is the scope of the work that needs to be carried out or the goal that needs to be reached. This is the actual task.
- Indicate why your idea or proposal is valuable. Who will it benefit from the results? Will it increase the reach of Ada/SPARK? Will fix a long standing issue or need?
- Indicate or estimate the difficulty of what you are proposing. This will give the committee a better idea of the work behind the proposal.
How will the committee select projects?
The committee will analyze each proposal independently. We will be looking for the following aspects (but not limited to) in order to make a decision on which ideas may get awarded:
- The available funds that the committee has at their disposal. The funds are limited, therefore, they will limit the number of selected projects.
- Projects that increase Ada’s reach into newer areas or communities, specially growing ones.
- Projects that will (hopefully) bring new contributors and new users to the language and its ecosystem.
- Projects that increase the usability of Ada’s tools, libraries and the wider ecosystem.
- Projects that will benefit the largest number of users.
- Projects that can help showcase or advocate the strength of the Ada/SPARK language.
- Projects that further develop or guide the evolution of the Ada language.
- Projects that are easy to use, deploy or benefit the final users.
- Projects whose objectives are feasible in a reasonable timeframe.
Announcing selected projects
The committee will make posts in the “Awards Winners” category announcing the ideas that have been selected and will indicate the selected amount of money for the prize. We also hope to use the Projects to Work On page to have a board or tabloid where all the open and active Awards will be listed.
If there are questions or comments about anything related to the process or ideas, please, ask them! We are here to help.
Best regards,
The Ada Users Committee