[OSGeo-Board] New Wiki Documents: Mission, FAQ, Fund Raising

[Arnulf Christl]

Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Gary Lang wrote:
> 
>> In general, we need to have a discussion about the benefits of being:
>>
>> a) a sponsor
>> b) a member
>> c) a hosted project
>>
>> and how these are wrapped with funding goals.
>> In terms of sponsors, another way of putting this need is to be able 
>> to answer this question: "What makes the foundation an attractive one 
>> for potential sponsors?" An identical question could be asked for each 
>> of a), b), and c).
> 
> 
> Gary,
> 
> Off the cuff I would respond:
> 
> Sponsor:
>  o There is a public relations benefit to being a sponsor.  I think the
>    broader geospatial user community has some awareness of open source
>    packages and will look favourable on organizations that help support
>    those packages.  The greater the user penetration of our packages the
>    greater the PR benefit of sponsorship.
> 
>  o Sponsorship helps support the packages and overall open source 
> geospatial
>    community that many organizations are coming to depend on to lesser or
>    greater degrees.  Making work on these packages sustainable helps ensure
>    those packages will be there for the sponsor in the future.  This is
>    proportionally important depending on how much the sponsor depends on 
> the
>    package(s) in question.
> 
>  o The sponsor gains some degree of "soft influence" with project 
> developers
>    by being a project or foundation sponsor.  I know that on behalf of the
>    GDAL/OGR project I would tend to be more aggressive in dealing with bug
>    reports or feature requests from a substantial sponsor.
> 
> Member (voting):
>  o A voting member has a say in keeping the foundation honest (as that 
> person
>    see honest).
>  o A voting member potentially has greater influence over areas of focus 
> and
>    effort for the foundation.
>  o Being a member selected by your peers provides a certain degree of
>    increased credibility for the person.  This could be useful in getting a
>    full time job, or consulting contracts.
> 
> A hosted project:
>  o gets some provided infrastructure, though for the most part such
>    infrastructure is cheap or free already.  We would need to convince 
> people
>    we do this very well for this to be a significant factor.
>  o provides legal protection for developers.
>  o has a greater credibility with users for having been accepted by the
>    foundation.  How valuable this is will depend in part on the degree of
>    quality and credibility people find existing foundation projects to 
> have.
>  o appears more open to new developers and users due to enforced PMC 
> process.
>  o has a mechanism to collect funding and greater leverage than a free
>    standing project to do this.
> 
> For me with GDAL/OGR, the greater sense of credibility and substance is the
> most important factor.
> 
>> A good subject for the next board meeting, because it drives/forces us 
>> to define a lot of things.
> 
> 
> This feels like a pretty open ended topic for a board meeting.  I don't
> think we need to get hung up on the benefits to members, since we don't
> seem to have much problem soliciting members.   We certainly need to ensure
> that we provide useful benefits to projects, but we seem on track for
> that.  But if we want to raise on the order of $200000/yr we will need to
> work on benefits for sponsors.
> 
> Best regards,

That - as most everythign that Frank puts together :-) - is the most 
best summary for the questions asked, +1 to all of them. This could be 
the foundation of a Wiki page "Benefits from being an active part of the 
OSGeo Foundation" (too long a title maybe).

Arnulf.