Haiku Inc.: Contractors, Haiku Code Drive, and Available Funds.

First and foremost, Stephan Aßmus's contract has been renewed for an additional 160 hours. Anyone who has run a recent revision of WebPositive will have an appreciation for the tremendous progress that has been achieved as a direct result of contractual work with Haiku Inc.

Secondly, we are continuing to further refine the Haiku Code Drive. Last year instead of allowing the community to select projects with the most appeal, the student selection process was moved into the knowledgeable hands of our acting mentors. This allowed them to pair the remaining & most promising students with a mentor who is suitable for the project. Despite this improvement, when the net results are viewed from a financial investment perspective, the results were not as spectacular as we had hoped.

For this year, we are focusing on a subset of Google Summer of Code™'s goals; and have decided to provide an existing student contributor a chance to work as a contractor. Adrien Destugues, well known for contributing the Locale API during his participation in Google Summer of Code 2009 has been selected. While he is still eligible to apply, he has voluntarily withheld participation in this year's Google Summer of Code as a student, opting to step up as mentor for our project. Adrien's contract is for two months and will revolve around improving the Locale API.

Currently our funds are approximately $10,000 USD. In our proposed budget, $5,000 USD is reserved for operating costs and marketing purposes. As such it is a priority to maintain that level, as it guarantees next year's costs. Assuming the contractors successfully fulfill their obligations, our ability to further Haiku by way of development contracts will be restricted. However, we are always willing to receive contract proposals, as it is our responsibility to identify ways in which financial support can boost Haiku.

As we have been accepted in Google Summer of Code 2010, there will be future incoming money, $500 per student mentored. However, the amount of students that we can mentor is influenced by several factors beyond our control. It is worth mentioning that our PayPal account now supports EUR as a secondary currency. This allows any incoming EUR-donations to remain as such, until it is used or intentionally converted into USD. As you can imagine, this will reduce losses by avoiding currency exchange fees. In time, we hope to continue improving the means for receiving and sending money.