[Board] A possible view of the world

[Michael P. Gerlek]

> > A percentage of the proceeds from each of the chapters would return to the OSGeo parent organization, to support hosting
> services, etc. (only if the chapter's proceeds are greater than a certain amount).
> 
> I am personally not at all keen on us trying to treat projects,
> chapters and conferences as revenue sources.  There is a
> great danger of alienating parts of our community if they get
> to feel we are shaking them down.  I know the "25% overhead"
> to OSGeo has been a barrier to some projects participating in
> the project sponsorship program which is why I've never tried
> to push projects into this mechanism if they would prefer to
> do things themselves and keep all their collected funds.

I don't have a specific number in mind, but I would have expected something much lower (10%?).

Rather than "revenue to OSGeo" I'd characterize it as a cost of the Chapter doing business, in that they can outsource to OSGeo for a lot of messy overhead things like hosting servers, keeping their books, providing legal resources, etc.

-mpg