<div dir="ltr">Great responses to my midnight blab. Thx for taking the time to address it all, <br>chris. Instead of picking at this line by line, I'll just try to summarize a response here.<br>(more blab)<br><br><br><br>
So first of all, the link to the Project Sponsorship page on the OSGeo wiki is great -- I <br>probably should have looked at that more before writing anything. Alas... :-)<br><br>But so one thing you mention in here is the GDL/OGR experience. Is there some <br>
documenation about that somewhere or is it more just firsthand knowledge. I think that<br>knowing more about how this sponsorship deal has actually worked out for other projects<br>would be a huge help to informing us as we put our feet into it. Any informal observations<br>
or links to more official documentation would be appreciated. <br><br>Overall, it seems like the main tension between our points of vista here are centered<br>around the notion that sponsors would somehow be hijacking the direction/focus of <br>
development activities for the project. <br><br>Although I think you know that I would resolutely agree with you about this in principle, <br>it's not something I'm nearly as ardent about defending... so it's great that you wrote this,<br>
that there's someone out there clearly voicing this important issue. <br><br>Whereas I definitely agree, again, "in principle", I think that this is maybe some grey<br>territoire here and that before making a public move with this, it would be good to sort it<br>
out. <br><br>The deal being that when I try to put myself in the shoes of Joe the Plumber ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H<br>Sponsor, I unfortunately just don't think they will universally understand this vibe. In an ideal<br>world, they all would and we could merrily go on about our business, but I just think that the<br>
typical "sponsor" will be more of the mindset "I give you money... what do I get out of it". <br>And even if we clearly explain to them the idea is just a general warm feeling of "supporting <br>the project" combined with the logo/marketing buzz.... I think they'll still at least *feel* like <br>
maybe they have some sort of implicit vote or weight in terms of project direction. <br><br>...and now that I've written all that out, I'm not even really sure exactly whether I have any <br>sort of a solution to that or not... just that it seems like something we should be attuned to <br>
and that if there were some way to somehow mitigate this factor, it might be worth looking <br>into. if others have opinions/experience, please chime in.<br><br>One thing that I saw on that wiki for the Project Sponsorship thing chez OSGeo is the <br>
"Earmarked Sponsorships" [1]. Maybe there is someway that this could be a sort of intermediary<br>happy ground in between these extremes. What I would really like is something like this but <br>on the other side... like instead of PSC suggesting special projects looking for money, it would<br>
be companies suggesting special projects and offerring money. <br><br>I realize that your answer to this is "if a company wants something done, they should pay <br>someone to do it" but I think we can look at the last 2.5 years and clearly see that that is <br>
*not* happenning. The only way that patches are getting into trunk is when a PSC member <br>is interested in the patch (or someone out there makes a whole whole whole lot of noise about it). <br><br>So again, I'm not saying "let's sell our souls to the highest bidder", all I'm saying is that maybe<br>
it would make sense to help out companies that find themselves in this situation but don't seem<br>to be able to connect the dots to make this happen. Remembering, afterall, that the whole idea<br>here is getting ideas and work out into the open so that we don't have 5 people doing the same<br>
thing (and especially if they are all *paying* to do it :-P)<br><br><br><br><br><br><br>Another issue you bring up is the ideas for how to *spend* the [theoretical] money. I suggest<br>prioritizing it for bunkers, whereas I *think* you are saying it would be better spent by funding<br>
people to do more administrative-type work for the project like bug tracking or email list question<br>fielding or something of that nature. ("better" is maybe not what you're saying but at least the idea<br>
that it is something to be considered equally with the bunkers). <br><br>And again, I think I agree with this in theory, I'm just curious as to how the actual implementation<br>of this would work out. I guess it all really boils down to how much theoretical money we are <br>
really talking about. If we were to somehow get like 10 gold sponsors for the project, then ya <br>ABSOLUTELY it is time to start funding someone to be the bug man or the users@ list man (or <br>woman, sorry). But if we're talking about $3,000 or somewhere more in that neighborhood, we're<br>
talking about something like $50-100 a week there... which I think is hardly enough to pay anyone<br>to be actually productive in an administrative/maintenance role. Let alone the idea that anyone <br>would even be *interested* in it, jeje. :-)<br>
<br>But seriously, my suggestion re the bunker thing was much more a sort of "easiest road to dog<br>food" thing than necessarily a studied analysis of the problem/opportunities. If it's as easy as just<br>dumping it into a bunker fund, that would be nice. Having to take decisions on who and how and <br>
where and when wrt the admin stuff.... although it may be very valuable... does imply more work <br>on our (PSC) part.<br><br><br><br><br>The final issue here is the PSC, and we seem to be in agreement. My only point there is that I think<br>
that if sponsors are going to be donating their money "to the project" (as you argue), essentially <br>putting full faith in the PSC to take good care of it, then I think we need to take another look at our<br>PSC and make sure it's even and fair enough that people who maybe aren't so familiar with the <br>
(stable, diligent) history of the PSC would be more (objectively) comfortable with it. <br><br><br>Oh and one more thing, re my suggestion for "guidelines" as to how to spend the money, which you <br>seemed sort of vehemently opposed to. I didn't mean to suggest implying like rules for connecting<br>
donations to actual work... all I really meant was adding a line or two to the PSC page on the wiki<br>or something like that with just some general rules about how we spend money. Really the only <br>thing I had in mind was like a bullet point clearly explaining the decision process (vote, majority, <br>
unanimous, days to wait, etc) and maybe another bullet enumerating the different types of things<br>that we'd consider spending money on.<br><br><br><br>Also keep in mind that one of the responsibilities is:<br><br>"To produce a detailed annual report of activities based on the
sponsorship funding to be posted <br>on the web site, and for distribution
to sponsors.
"<br><br>...so there is another overhead that is added to the project. Would we nominate someone from the <br>PSC to be in charge of this? Worth documenting.<br><br><br><br><br><br>My whole issue with this whole thing is just that adding money into the mix I think always tends<br>
to complicate things. Even though I know we already *have* companies essentially giving us <br>money in the form of allowing us time to work on openlayers... i just think that when it's actually<br>real money people will act in different ways. <br>
<br><br><br><br>One more thing that was just brought up in discussion is how are we going to balance out the <br>recognition given to paying sponsors versus companies that simply donate developer time? I'm <br>thinking specifically of MetaCarta, OpenGeo, Camptocamp, etc. These are all companies making<br>
huge investments in the project and yet getting no overt (logo, etc) recognition. If I were one of <br>them I would feel that somewhat unfair.<br><br>sorry for more unstructured blab,<br>e<br><br>[1] <a href="http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Project_Sponsorship#Earmarked_Sponsorships">http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Project_Sponsorship#Earmarked_Sponsorships</a><br>
<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 9:15 AM, Schuyler Erle <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:schuyler@nocat.net">schuyler@nocat.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="Ih2E3d">On Fri, 2008-10-17 at 07:22 -0400, Christopher Schmidt wrote:<br>
<br>
> I have seen no cases I'm aware of where the PSC has completely ignored<br>
> a<br>
> request, or even, generally speaking, acted against the will of the<br>
> project, so at this time it seems likely there is a fair amount of<br>
> trust in the PSC. Fixing that, if there is not, is an important part<br>
> of<br>
> the process for gaining sponsors.<br>
<br>
</div>I agree. I think we have a strong record of achieving consensus as per<br>
the project bylaws. We might appoint a treasurer from within the PSC<br>
just to be the go-to person for receiving and disbursing the funds<br>
according to PSC direction, but I think that should be about it for<br>
starters.<br>
<div class="Ih2E3d"><br>
> Your tenure as PSC chair is a testament to your continued ability to<br>
> hold the project together better than anyone else could, as far as I'm<br>
> concerned, stretching from your ability to chat for hours on the phone<br>
> about the various issues related to a release, to the ability to step up<br>
> as release manager, to your consensus driven comunication style, which<br>
> has worked out perfectly for the 'chairman of the board' position that<br>
> you hold. Given my druthers, I personally wouldn't have it any other way<br>
> if I had to start all over.<br>
<br>
</div>+1 on all counts!<br>
<br>
SDE<br>
<br>
</blockquote></div><br></div>