[OSGeo-Board] opening and organizing

[Chris Holmes]

A couple other groups to think about are NGO's, like the UN, or specific 
divisions of the UN.  Jeroen can keep us posted on the possibilities for 
this, but it seems like he might be able to make a good case to them. 
Open source is now I think officially recommended to member countries, 
as is good GIS, so they could be interested in supporting.

Another is academia.  ITC springs to mind instantly.  There's 
http://52north.org, which I think university of Munster is also involved 
in.  I imagine they'd go for lower sponsership rungs, but that the PR 
value could be of benefit to them, in addition to helping support a 
number of packages they depend on.

Chris

Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> 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,

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