[Board] Project Donations

[Markus Neteler]

On Nov 22, 2007 9:41 PM, Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) <tmitchell at osgeo.org> wrote:
> These are all fine arguments, perhaps I'm just not as good at
> explaining the value to others so clearly. It does all seem
> reasonable to me, but it's the outward perception to members,
> projects, users and public that can be a challenge.
>
> Let me back up - one discussion I had with Markus pushed me to
> consider how we could better help the projects on this front.  The
> one example I'm thinking of is related to QGIS.  Apparently there is
> an effort somehow related to the Italian Chapter to collect funding
> for squashing QGIS bugs.  (Markus can correct my mistakes in this
> statement)  It seems that some donors want 100% of their donation
> going toward particular project goals, so the Project Sponsorship
> angle isn't palatable.  How this aligns with the QGIS PSC, I am not
> sure.

Here is the QGIS example:
http://www.cofundos.org/project.php?id=55

also a PostGIS one:
http://www.cofundos.org/project.php?id=46

In my opinion it is basically a communication problem. People
may think (I am guessing here) that their 25% OSGeo tax are
taken to feed the Ed or someone else. It needs to be better
communicated how the money is used (see recent Mozilla
Foundation issue [1]). We are not in this situation but need
to avoid it from the beginning. There are many possibilities
to do it the right way and to avoid that people try to bypass
OSGeo (especially without asking us for explanations or hints).

Markus


[1] http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/11/12/you_do_the_work_mozilla_banks_the_money.html