[OSGeo-Board] Budget. Eat this.

[Frank Warmerdam]

Arnulf Christl wrote:
> Another question altogether is whether this needs to change? Do we 
> really need to set up a large budget? In the hope that especially Gary 
> doesn't lose interest (we need you all the same or even more) I am still 
> positive that we can do with very little planned for and fixed money 
> involved. By setting up a half million budget for the first year we 
> change the character of the Foundation a lot and go business right away. 
> I don't think that I like that.

Arnulf,

I'll admit to my own qualms about setting up such a large budget.  I'm
worried that raising so much money will consume an aweful lot of effort
and goodwill and that we may need to make undesirable compromises to
accomplish it.

Clearly, things could remain grassroots as they are, but I feel a
substantial part of why I am supporting OSGeo is so that it can
accelerate open source adoption in a substantial way, and as several
people have pointed applying money can make a big difference.

I have a vague sense that we can achieve something like an order
of magnitude larger impact on the geospatial field over the next
half a decade by getting better organized and pushing in more
professional ways.  I don't know if that is true ... I must admit
I am operating in an area I'm not too well versed in.  But I'm willing
to "stretch" quite a bit to try and leap ahead in such a way.

> And this is exactly what makes me stop short. Its not so much that there 
> is money involved at all but what it does to our goals. And to our 
> governance and to the faith of our contributors. 

I think we have already made some important steps in keeping our governance
true to our principles.  Mainly I mean establishing the 45 charter members
who I feel have a strong sense of what open source is all about.

> * To provide resources for foundation projects - infrastructure, funding
> (Fundraising), legal, ... - $60,000
> 
> This does make sense as we will have to be able to technically provide
> for a container to manage and archive all legally relevant project
> information, data, code, etc. All the same we are about to prove 
> (hopefully) that a .org infrastructure like telascience can jump in 
> perfectly well.

While telascience is providing physical infrastructure, good system
administration costs money, and that is what the bulk of that 60K is
for.

> * To operate an annual OSGeo Conference, possibly in cooperation with
> related efforts (e.g. EOGEO) - $100,000
 >
> I believe that the annual conference should finance itself. Fullstop. If 
> it does not, there is no need to continue it, then the conference is 
> simply dead because no one wants it anymore. I am very sure that a 
> commercial provider will be able to estimate the risk and finance a 
> conference of this size just fine. If somebody from inside OSGeo wants 
> to organize conferences professionally, so much the better - let them do 
> it. If we do not find anybody with enough spatial balls - ask O'Reilly. 
> We should just let somebody else take on the risk and the work and if 
> they make some money out of it - fine. If they mess it up they did it 
> for the last time and next year somebody else does it (messes it up 
> again, obviously). This is just being highly pragmatic - not 
> anti-commercial.

First, the $100k is a working fund for the conference, and once raised
should be replentished from the conference once it is complete.  I'm
not keen on farming out the conference whole-sale to a commercial
conference organizer because I think this will boost costs substantially
making it less accessable to the community.

While I enjoyed Where 2.0 quite a lot, it is definately *not* the
sort of conference I want to run for the OSGeo community.

That said, I'm flexible on how we run the conference.  But I do think
it is an important part of building the community and fulfilling our
goals, so I want to ensure it is well supported and not operating at
random from year to year.

> * To make foundation and related software more accessible to end users -
> binary "stack" builds, cross package documentation, etc. - $50,000
> 
> Yes, but what for? I am sure to be able to get together $50,000 for one 
> year all by myself from clients that I am in contact with and who need a 
> binary stack. It would be problem-driven and not product-planned.

The goal of this money was to provide a seed for binary stack building
activity.

Lots of folks are already doing problem driven binary stack builds.
DM Solutions produces MS4W and FGS that provide the services they see
their customer base requiring.  I produce FWTools mostly so that I can
provide the latest and greatest features and bug fixes to my clients and
users.   Various others also exist.  But none of them are very
comprehensive and none are fullfilling the broad needs of the geospatial
software user community.

The "binary stack build" is an effort to make our toolset more accessable
and useful to end users.

We could certainly argue (and no doubt will) about the best way to
provide the user with useful builds, but I personally feel we are losing
a lot of potential users who are turned off by the mismash of builds
available.

> We would need a channel that we can stuff the money in - and that could 
> well be OSGeo. But do we need to fix a budget that we have to reach 
> until we really know that somebody is going to pay for it? 

I think it is clear that we the board need to see how successful fundraising
is before starting too many activities so as to not outstrip our ability
to raise money.  But that aside, it is hard to try and raise money without
some reasonable description of what we want it for.  I see the budget
as much as a "visioning exercise" as it is about a concrete spending plan.

 > This is why I
> do not want to accept why FunCom doesn't just start to collect money 
> right away. Find out what we have to sell and sell it. That is probably 
> too easy. (btw. I still have those €1000,- from FOSSGIS for the t-shirts 
> because Adsk did it again! embtw (even more btw) Thanks Gary!((mine was 
> scissors, yours was paper))).

ADSK covered the shirts? Doh!  I'm eager to get to the point were we
aren't just doing everything on Autodesk's tab!

> * Promote the use of open source software in the geospatial industry
> (not just foundation software)- $133,000

I'm not exactly sure if this amount was the executive director
amount or the budget for VisCom promotion (boths, trade shows, travel,
etc).

A number of respectible people have made the point that an organization
is that all volunteer run (especially busy people like us) will generally
have substantially less impact than an organization with some full time
staff to "carry the ball".

That said, I am a cheapskate, and would prefer to see us take a
relatively cheap approach to promotion with substantial amounts of
money spent only when we feel it is especially critical.  I'm pretty
keen on having an executive director (but not eager to grow "staff"
beyond that); but even on that front I would prefer to see the salary
and benefits be enough for the person to be comfortable, but not so
high as to appear like a windfall to the community.  In essence I would
prefer to have an executive director working for a bit less than they
might be able to get in the private sector to demonstrate that they are
in it for the cause, not just the money.

> Citing from the Wiki at:
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Fundraising
> 
> In order to aggressively pursue promotion it is perceived that OSGeo
> would need one full time staff member (an executive director) and
> substantial resources for promotion, travel, infrastructure support. A
> value of $200000 USD per year in general foundation income (as opposed
> to conference, or project specific funding) has been suggested as a
> desirable goal.
> 
> I do not like the wording "aggressively pursue". I don't think that I am 
> a wimp but who on earth should we pursue "aggressively"? We explicitly 
> state in our charter that we don't want to hurt anybody... This is not 
> just funny words.

To me "aggressively pursue" means actually making a substantial effort
to get out there and promote sponsorship.  Sort of the opposite of how
I get paid work (by only trying weakly to avoid it).

> So what Executive Director would need to be is a mentor helping out when 
 > there is trouble between the bros and sisters of the Foundation.

This would be one role, but not a substantial part of the activity of
the ED in my mind.  I see them more often in an outwards facing role,
as the ambassador of OSGeo.  But also providing mundane support to
the various committees to ensure that things are getting done that need
to be.  Drafting policies, web materials, etc.

 > Dine with the rich uncle? Fine. But
> do we need a paid for secretary and then a CTO and then a CKO (would I 
> love that job...). And so on.

Well, I have a "staff phobia" which is why I'm a one-man outfit.  I
don't mind OSGeo contracting for some administrative services or other
special activities (like binary stack, etc) but would prefer to keep
paid staff as small as is practical, like one person for the next future.

> Can we hammer down somewhere that the 'main decision body' of OSGeo must 
> not (is not allowed to) ever spend more than 5% of their 
> OSGeo-brainpower thinking about how to fund the next year? I will fight 
> for this.

Well, a quantitative value is impractical, but I think if we become
too focused on fund raising we should re-evaluate our priorities.

In summary, I'm nervous about the big budget, but I think getting to the
"next level of credibility, and impact" which is my goal, will require
money and I'm prepared to go against my conservative instincts if needed.
Clearly the rest of the board needs to consider how they feel about this
too.

Best regards,
-- 
---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGF, http://osgeo.org