[OSGeo-Board] opening and organizing

[Frank Warmerdam]

Gary Lang wrote:
 > Frank wrote:
> "I would add that only ADSK has put in money so far because we haven't 
> asked for sponsorship from anyone else yet."
> 
> Well, I spent time with ADSK's "peer companies" and some other people out
> there to guage their interest and a few others. They said no.
>
> The reason we are willing to do it and these others are not is because we
> needed a home outside of ADSK for MapGuide...

Gary,

Well, I would suggest that ADSK peer companies are not the most natural
targets for sponsorship.  Instead, I think the most natural "target" are
organizations already substantially invested in use of foundation projects.

As I stated on my fundraising page, I would divide these into:

  1) Proprietary software companies depending on FOSS components.  This
     would be organizations such as Safe Software, or ERMapper and a
     variety of my other clients.  These organizations often have a stake
     in seeing the components they depend on florish.  The downside is
     that to some degree or other the broader OSGeo community may threaten
     their own software base.

  2) Integrators and services consulting companies.  These are a lot of
     companies building substantial amounts of business around foundation
     projects.  I know GDAL/OGR and MapServer best in this regard, and
     I know there are a lot of companies using these that are willing to
     contribute.  Alot of these organizations aren't huge or terribly
     high margin, so selling a $27000 contribution would be hard. $9K is
     possible, and $3K would often be relatively easy as long as we can
     convince them it will also result in better maintenance of the products
     they depend on.  These folks also get real PR benefit from being seen
     to support the packages they build on - sort of the "closer to god" thing.

  3) User organizations.  One of the things I think is empowering about
     FOSS is that user organizations can really influence their supply chain.
     Big organizations like NRCan and smaller organizations like cities are
     increasingly depending on packages like MapServer (and no doubt
     MapGuide OS) and have a stake in seeing them taken care of.  They would
     normally be cutting substantial annual licensing cheques to a software
     vendor.  It makes sense for them to support the foundation if it results
     in better quality software for them.  The tricky part (in my mind) is
     putting the sponsorship in a form that these organizations can sell to
     their financial authorities.  For instance, it is much easier for these
     organizations to sign off on licensing fees, or support contracts that it
     is to sign off on a donation to a foundation (I would assume).

I think there can be a case made to the "mega corps" (ie. ADSK's peer group)
based primarily on the PR benefit, but I think that is a harder sell.  To
some degree it will get easier if OSGeo builds a strong reputation.

I would add I have already felt out a few of my clients, and they were
positive about sponsorship.  As always, just how much can be collected is
unclear.  My first $25K should be easy.

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