[Qgis-developer] Sponsoring Development

[Andrew Chapman]

Sorry - this is a long post!
This discussion so far has focused primarily on the QGIS developers'
viewpoint, but I think it may be worth considering the situation from the
perspective of those with the money. There seem to be (at least) four major
groups that could help, each with their own agendas/motivators.
1) National and governmental. These organisations potentially have access to
very large amounts of money with decisions being driven (probably) by a mix
of political agenda and perceived national benefit. I think money from this
group (if gained) would be in relatively large amounts (in the UK, projects
would be unlikely to be less than £10k and could lead to much larger
amounts), with quite broad targets and little or no day to day overseeing.
To get such money I think we need to have increased use of GIS seen as
important to national success and QGIS perceived as the best solution to
support. Not only do we want to encourage use of QGIS directly but also we
need to publicise it wherever possible and try to get it added to government
software lists.
2) Medium to large organisations. These organisations typically will have a
specific and (hopefully) well-defined requirement and would see the
developers as external consultants. The solution could possibly be at two
levels with QGIS consultants helping deliver overall solutions that have
additional work sub-contracted within the developer group.
Typically, before any formal quote is requested, someone would be asked for
an order of magnitude estimate of likely cost and timescales. I've spent
decades on both sides of this fence working as a consultant and managing a
variety of sub-contract projects - if someone cannot quickly answer the
basic questions at this stage (availability of competent people, range of
daily rates, complexity and risk/uncertainty, very rough estimate of likely
effort required) then the project dies at birth.
The next stage would be a formal specification and quotation phase, neither
of which should be overly complex. If there is a lot of uncertainty, I've
usually run a small pre-project to remove the uncertainty and reduce
development risks.
3) Small organisations and individual users. These people generally have
little money... but there are lots of them. The main voluntary payments that
they make are to charities so, while not going as far as suggesting that
QGIS become a registered charity, could we try to convince people to make
small regular payments? 1,000 people giving £50 each on average per year
would pay for a useful amount of bug fixing etc.
4) Current and potential developers. Developers put a lot of their time and
often personal money into QGIS. The easier it is for new developers to
contribute, the more everyone benefits. Can we make it easier for potential
new developers to get started? Could we have an OSGeo4 type of installer to
create a working development environment for plugins and/or trunk? 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Group (1) needs marketing effort. Pete Wells, Saber Razmjooei (both Faunalia
UK) and I have been doing this in the UK with Ordnance Survey, national and
local government for about three months and progress is looking promising. 
Group (2) is also part of our marketing, but there is a clear problem in
that even the first "order of magnitude cost" question would be difficult to
answer... although in reality I would come up with a number based on what I
know of QGIS and lots of years making educated guesses.
Group (3) we could have gentle encouragement to make payments... but it must
be easy! My experience making a donation for hackfest was that it was hard
work and has resulted in a rash of Italian spam. We would need foolproof way
to make local currency payments including by cheque.
And finally, don't forget the documentation. User manuals and tutorials are
as much part of "selling" QGIS to users as its functionality.
Andrew Chapman