Tentative plan and job description for Altai project

1. This page is the description of a job for the Altai project. At the time of writing this document the project is not much more specific than the project description in this document.
2. The Altai project aims to replace a part of current input infrastructure of NEP: New Economics Papers. The project will be lead by Thomas Krichel.
3. Thomas Krichel will produce a work plan for the project, between 2004-06-01 and 2004-07-01. This plan will be presented, discussed, and agreed upon with the members for the NEP-editors mailing list. The design document will also try to make sure tact the software can be used by socionet with minimum changes.
4. Most likely the plan will involve:
   • The maintenance of a store of documents available on RePEc, to check for their free availability. This check will have to be conducted using a machine in somebody's home, i.e. without IP authentication privileges.
   • The transfer of data on freely downloadable papers to another machine that will host the composition service.
   • The maintenance of a script that composes a set of presumed "new" papers regularly.
   • The setup of an interface where general editor can weed out old papers.
   • The setup of a web interface that editors use to compose reports.
   • The translation of the XML data of selected reports to text, and the mailing to the reports.
5. The project will be hiring a programmer, henceforth the postholder. She or he will under the constant supervision of Thomas Krichel, i.e. working in the same room, be writing software. No hardware maintenance is required. Thomas Krichel will also lend a hand in the programming effort.
6. From the project description above, we are looking to recruit someone with good knowledge in at least three of the following areas
   • Perl
   • PHP
   • XML, especially XSLT
   • Linux system administration, especially Debian
   In addition, we would consider positive for candidates to have
   • experience with open source software projects
   • reasonable command of English
   • motivation to work for philanthropic, academic projects
7. Pay and conditions are as follows. The postholder will be working for two months full time and for up to two months part time. The monthly full-time wage is roughly USD500. The full-time work period is 2004-06-28 to 2004-09-01. The postholder will be paid $500 on the 2004-06-28, and 2004-08-08. A third payment will be made to the postholder at the end of work that terminates the project. The exact conditions of this project end will be determined by Thomas Krichel and the postholder.
8. Funding for this project will be provided by the WoPEc project funds. These were given by the donated by the Joint Information Systems Committee of the UK's Higher Education Funding Councils. If there is any problem with transfering money source, Thomas Krichel will be paying from his private funds.
9. In case of a dispute between the postholder and Thomas Krichel, both will adhere to the mediation of Sergei I. Parinov.
10. For further information please contact Thomas Krichel by email to krichel@openlib.org for enquiries is English or Sergei I. Parinov at parinov@ieie.nsc.ru for enquiries in Russian. Please state "Altai Project" in the subject line.
11. The position has now been filled. Roman Shapiro, eleroman at the site mail dot ru, will be working on the project.

---

Written by Thomas Krichel, first draft: 2004-01-19, this draft: 2004-01-23