[OSGeo-Board] Fund raising

[Markus Neteler]

On Wed, Feb 15, 2006 at 01:09:19PM -0600, Chris Holmes wrote:
> 
> 
> 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.

+1 from Markus

Also GRASS depends on external libraries such as GDAL/OGR, PROJ
and others.
 
> >
> >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...
>

We should work on getting the algorithms well documented
and sort of catalogized online to simplify code recycling
or linking to libraries.

Markus