[Board] Sponsorship Contingent Initiatives

[Frank Warmerdam]

Folks,

Today in the informal board irc meeting we discussed a number of issues
with regard to sponsorship.

One idea I floated is "Sponsorship Contingent Initiatives".  These are
initiatives that OSGeo or it's projects would like to undertake but that
require funding and that we would only undertake when enough new sponsors
have signed up with OSGeo, and expressed their support, for the effort to
have funding.   Obviously, in coming up with such a list we would need keep
in mind activities that are likely to be attractive enough to potential
sponsors to help push them over the edge to decide to sponsor.


Possible funded initiatives:

1) A one year "security audit" project for some core set of web facing
    components (ie. MapServer, MapGuide, ...), including running them through
    some standard tools for exploit identification, etc.

2) A funded position to package, and support OSGeo4W in "enterprise ready"
    form.

3) A 4 month effort to establish best practices for software security
    across a suite of OSGeo projects.

4) A 6 month open geodata advocacy project that includes writing white
    papers on open government geodata activities around the world, attending
    and speaking at government-policy-level conferences, and some direct
    outreach to policy makers.

5) A funded project to add SQL Server spatial support in several places
    (OGR, GeoTools, FDO), and to deploy a test instance on a builtbot
    instance so regression testing becomes part of our core capacity.

These are all activities that would require some funding to support paid
time, travel, etc, but that could be fairly attractive to some user
organizations or vendors.  In most cases it they would require more than
one sponsor to sign up, unless a sponsor stepped up at the highest levels.

Most of the above are deliberately cross-project, partly to demonstrate
the value of OSGeo as an organization that can make things happen across
projects.  I would note that there are existing mechanisms for "Earmarked
Sponsorships" for individual projects, and for simple software development
efforts it would generally be easier for sponsors to directly contract
to get things done.

It is my intention that the sponsorship contingent initiatives would be
done time things, but that the sponsorships would be normal recurring
sponsorships.  That is, we are hoping once an organization has sponsored
us once, we hope they will continue to sponsor us without necessarily
having a special project they want to happen.  However, I would not
mind renewing sponsors also being able to "direct their support" to
contingent initiatives if they want.

Once a contingent initiative has accumulated sufficient support, it will
be OSGeo's responsibility to manage the initiative.  While (as noted above)
the deliverables may not be terribly specific, we do have an
obligation to achieve the general intent of the initiative.  The
success of the initiative may have a substantial influence on the sponsors
view of us as an effective organization.

As our only true "staff resource" we might need the ED to take
monitoring/management role for initiatives that are initiated.  I'm
assuming in most case we would be essentially contracting someone to
pursue the activities.  I am also presuming that the initiatives would
be initially prepared in combination with someone who is interested
in taking the contract to do the task.

If there is interest, one such "contingent initiative" I would be interested
in writing up in more detail would be with regard to OSGeo4W.  I also think
I might be able to identify a few organizations willing to sign up as
sponsors at some level in support of it.

Best regards,
-- 
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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    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent