[OSGeo Oceania] [Oceania-Board] Sponsoring GDAL maintainer

Wed Mar 17 19:37:28 PDT 2021

Sounds like we're all good to make a donation given it's under $1,000 @Dionne
Hansen <dionne.hansen at gmail.com>.
Would we better off making a one time donation here or becoming a
monthly sponsor at around $50 or $100?

I'd personally be in favour of ongoing donations as it's more sustainable.

Sorry to further complicate, but hadn't considered this option earlier.

Whatever we choose, I think we should just sponsor and then work out
mechanics of matching donations later on.

On Wed, 17 Mar 2021 at 01:36, Dionne Hansen <dionne.hansen at gmail.com> wrote:

> So are we thinking we match donations up to a certain amount using Tito in
> the short term, and then the long term plan is get donations from
> organisations. (Thanks for attaching that donation info, I had no idea!)
> For the short term plan, is everyone happy with the $500 of OSGeo Oceania
> funds to match community donations up to that amount in Tito?
>
> On Wed, 17 Mar 2021 at 18:31, Edoardo Neerhut <eneerhut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> *GDAL*
>> Thanks for kicking this off Dionne. It's exactly the kind of
>> initiative we should be supporting.
>> @Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com> Tito seems perfect for this. Great
>> idea.
>>
>> *Corporate sponsorships and donations*
>> This is definitely something we should set up. OpenStreetMap US recently
>> received an $80,000 donation from craigslist which I think indicates the
>> level of interest in our community and the tools we support/enable. There
>> are countless organisations using OS GIS and OpenStreetMap in our region
>> who have the funds and willingness to support the community. Sounds like we
>> should look at the legal options and then just set up something simple to
>> begin with using PayPal, Stripe or similar.
>>
>> [image: image.png]
>>
>> On Tue, 16 Mar 2021 at 02:08, Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm with John on this one, I'd like to kick some funds in too.
>>>
>>> I wonder if a broader sponsorship drive, where OSGeo Oceania can 'sell'
>>> a kind of corporate support to orgs in Australia and pool funds is a good
>>> idea?
>>>
>>> Let's keep this simple though. From a finance perspective, I can set up
>>> something in Tito, perhaps, where we can sell a 'pay what you want' and
>>> OSGeo Oceania could match, and we kick over a chunk of change to support
>>> GDAl development :-)
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> On Tue, 16 Mar 2021 at 18:46, John Bryant <johnwbryant at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Great initiative, thanks Dionne!
>>>>
>>>> I'm totally in support of anything we can do in this region to help
>>>> make open source more sustainable. If OSGeo Oceania sets up a matching fund
>>>> and helps identify productive ways to spend it (not just on GDAL, but
>>>> perhaps on an array of important projects), I would like to contribute. I
>>>> hope any business or org in the region that benefits from using open source
>>>> would consider contributing.
>>>>
>>>> The QGIS SIG was initiated to help with the procurement problem you
>>>> mention, where many organisations can't make a "donation" but can justify
>>>> spending on a "membership". We haven't kicked this off yet, but will soon.
>>>> Hopefully there will be some useful lessons learned along the way.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers
>>>> John
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, 16 Mar 2021 at 15:11, Dionne Hansen <dionne.hansen at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hello OSGeo Oceania,
>>>>> I'm addressing this to the board, the OSGeo oceania members and to the
>>>>> wider community. It has come to my attention that  a message sent on the
>>>>> goal-dev mailing list here:
>>>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/gdal-dev/2021-January/053302.html -
>>>>> which highlights a problem with burnout among the GDAL maintainers and
>>>>> outlines the difficulties of maintaining a tool like GDAL when one is only
>>>>> paid for developing new features but not for maintaining the project,
>>>>> responding to the mailing list, bug fixing, or new releases.
>>>>>
>>>>> That message further outlines ways of overcoming the problem of
>>>>> burning out the project maintainers. Including getting more people to
>>>>> participate and providing a revenue stream so that a maintainer only has to
>>>>> do the maintenance job.
>>>>>
>>>>> Even Rouault (the current maintainer of the project with over 19,838
>>>>> commits) put up a call for sponsorship (
>>>>> https://github.com/sponsors/rouault) for his activities maintaining
>>>>> and improving GDAL and PROJ. He is also a developer of QGIS, MapServer,
>>>>> libtiff, libgeotiff, and cpenjpeg.
>>>>>
>>>>> I feel that OSGeo Oceania should be doing our part to help with
>>>>> revenue streams to safeguard the maintainer against overloading and
>>>>> burnout.
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) As a stop gap effort I propose that we donate $500 to Even for
>>>>> maintenance purposes.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2) I think we should discuss if we can help in any other capacity -
>>>>> ie. amplify the need to donate money to projects like these, matching
>>>>> donated amounts up to a certain limit?
>>>>>
>>>>> 3) Discuss the barriers that our respective organisations have to
>>>>> donating maintenance funds to these projects. Ie. my employer could not
>>>>> sponsor via GitHub without breaking procurement rules. Is there anything
>>>>> that OSGeo Oceania can do to make maintenance sponsorship easier?
>>>>>
>>>>> I'd appreciate a discussion about what we can do to help in the near
>>>>> and long term and I will set up a loomio thread for the $500.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> Dionne Hansen
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Oceania-Board mailing list
>>>>> Oceania-Board at lists.osgeo.org
>>>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/oceania-board
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Oceania mailing list
>>>> Oceania at lists.osgeo.org
>>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/oceania
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Alex Leith
>>> m: 0419189050
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Oceania mailing list
>>> Oceania at lists.osgeo.org
>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/oceania
>>>
>>
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