[OSGeo-Board] Fund raising

[Chris Holmes]

Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Arnulf Christl (CCGIS) wrote:
> 
>>> Thought I'd pass this along. This is a page from OpenOffice for
>>> donating funds to OpenOffice.
>>>
>>> http://contributing.openoffice.org/donate.html
>>>
>>> Daniel Brookshier
>>
>>
>> I think that we need to address this topic with great care as we are in a
>> different position than a single project or a set of projects that have
>> already grown together for some time. For the time being some OSGeo
>> projects compete for the same customers and in many cases companies are
>> tied very much to *one* (*their*) software package. We should give this a
>> good thought before thinking about how to distribute seomething we don't
>> even yet have.
> 
> 
> Arnulf,
> 
> Dealing with this reality was part of the rationale for my concept of
> foundation sponsors being able to identify one or more projects that they
> wish to support.  In this situation 2/3 of their sponsorship goes into a
> fund for the exclusive use of that project, while the remainder is 
> available
> for general foundation overhead.
> 
> In this situation, the foundation would not normally direct general
> foundation money to paying for development of a particular project.  
> Instead
> general foundation funds would be directed to supporting common project
> infrastructure, admin and legal support, paying for a community manager
> or executive director, overall promotional efforts, various kinds of 
> outreach
> and so forth.
> 
> This way sponsors can ensure their support is mostly directed to a
> particular project if they wish, and projects don't need to feel that
> "their sponsors" money is being wasted on some other quixotic or competing
> project.
One thing I'd like to maybe see is that money going to an application 
gives some percentage to the underlying libraries.  I have no need to 
see this required, but if/when GeoServer joins I certainly want some 
percentage going straight to GeoTools, since it contains a large 
majority of our code.

> 
> Based on this scenario it benefits the foundation to attract projects
> which are likely to attract sponsorship funds.
> 
> Note that none of the above precludes projects getting their own funding as
> they do now.
> 
> I really like the part on the OpenOffice.org page that says "We strongly
> prefer that people become contributors."  That is, contributions in kind
> (programming, documentation, user support, outreach, bug isolation, etc)
> is often much better than cash donations.  Certainly it is my hope that
> volunteering will be the main form of individual contribution.
Yes, this is what excites me the most about the foundation, really 
opening up the collaboration infrastructure so that people can 
contribute in a lot of interesting ways.  That collaboration 
infrastructure is definitely the most important piece of the foundation, 
and worth some serious thought.  More on that soon...

best regards,

Chris

> 
> Best regards,

-- 
Chris Holmes
The Open Planning Project
thoughts at: http://cholmes.wordpress.com
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