Having worked with Jasper on projects quite a lot in the past years, it troubles me to see a mixed response to his funding request. We should be welcoming him back with open arms in my opinion.
That said, I can understand why there are concerns, but I think they are misplaced. I want to share some of my personal thoughts on what’s been said in this thread:
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There’s been no crime commited here. I was in contact with Jasper early on, and he made clear he would do good on his commitment one way or another. It took some time, but he came back, and did exactly just that, as promised. What else is there really to discuss?
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This is not employment. Making the analogy of “what would happen if you did XYZ at a job” doesn’t make sense to me. There’s no sick leave. There’s no support or health care. You don’t have a manager, and you don’t have any obligations or answer to anyone. You make a request for funding to go work on certain things, and then it’s up to you to deliver against that. That’s it.
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There are comments above about how Jasper “should have communicated”, how “reasonable” of a request that would have been, and stating he was “clearly capable” of doing so. Based on him forking a github repo? As a community, I’d like to see us speculating less about people’s abilities and personal situations, do less “detective work” when there’s no crime committed, and instead spend more time constructively trying to improve Grin and grow our community. To me personally, it feels incredibly off-putting to see a bunch of random people here make claims about other people’s personal states during periods where they’ve explicitly taken a leave of absence. It’s not something I would like to see happen if I ever had to make the same request. I urge you to stop with this, give people space, and try to be a positive force instead.
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The timings of Jasper’s re-appearance for sure can appear suspicious, but the fact of the matter is that Jasper had been talking about coming back a long time before that vote ever took place. Others can attest to that. His return was already in the works, and I personally urged him to come back before he was voted off, as I thought that him staying on the council would be a net positive for the project. And so he did.
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If we want to meet the scope we’ve set out for v5, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. I don’t see how we could do it without Jasper. Why would it be better for the project to not have him work these next few months?
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Regarding being paid 3 months in advance or month-by-month, this is a complete red herring to me. I’m sure Jasper would agree to either. But I for one trust him and am happy he’s back, and I don’t see a need to trust him any less than before, or anyone else. Again, we seem to forget that he actually came through on his previous funding request. I’m sure he’ll come through now too. There might be reasons for why we should pay everyone on a monthly basis, but I see no reason to make Jasper the exception here. The concern with Paouky was that he had not made a single contribution of note prior to his request being approved.
If you need anyone vouching for Jasper, I wholeheartedly do so, for whatever that is worth. When he took a break, I asked him early on what was up, he gave me an answer, he promised to come back and do right by him, and he did just that. We were in touch throughout this period.
He has my full support, and I hope he has yours as well.