[Board] Project sponsoring

Sun Feb 21 06:42:05 PST 2016

Hi

> On 21 Feb 2016, at 05:54, Venkatesh Raghavan <raghavan at media.osaka-cu.ac.jp> wrote:
> 
> Even,
> 
> Thanks for bringing this up. As Jody, has pointed out,
> the funding GDAL through "Project Sponsorship" [1]
> of OSGeo Foundation is possible. I do think that our .501(c)(4)
> status does no restrict sponsorship opportunities is anyway.
> As in the past, the OSGeo board will be happy to manage the
> this under "Project Sponsorship" [1].
> 
> QGIS and gvSIG associations must had a good reason to manage
> their sponsorship independently. One of the reasons that they
> decided to do so could be because it was more convenient, I guess.

If I understand the discussion correctly, you are referring to the use of OSGEO to manage project funds? Speaking for QGIS, when OSGEO was initially founded we used OSGEO to manage our funds, but there was a bylaw (not sure if you still have it) that took a very large cut (20% ?) in favour of OSGEO off the top of any money that was managed by OSGEO on our behalf. We also found it quite inflexible to move money around - if we wanted to pay for something we first had to go through multiple layers and wait states to make payment. Both of these factors made using OSGEO as a fund management agent a no-go for us.

Regards

Tim

> 
> Funding developers directly is also a possibility, but in some cases
> the sponsors may like to have their paperwork done through an
> officially registered foundation or association.
> 
> Personally, I think that managing GDAL sponsorship would depend
> on what is most convenient for the PSC and potential Project
> Sponsors.
> 
> The board would be happy to assist in managing the GDAL "Project
> Sposorship".
> 
> Best
> 
> Venka
> 
> [1] http://www.osgeo.org/sponsorship/opportunities <http://www.osgeo.org/sponsorship/opportunities>
> 
> On 2016/02/21 2:15, Jody Garnett wrote:
>> Project sponsorship works, we fixed the tax stuff.
>> 
>> I best make a news announcement.
>> On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 5:26 AM Even Rouault <even.rouault at spatialys.com> <mailto:even.rouault at spatialys.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi board,
>>> 
>>> I just received an email from a company, as a long time user of GDAL, that
>>> would have been interested in sponsoring it. They found
>>> http://gdal.org/sponsorship.html <http://gdal.org/sponsorship.html>, that is a remain of the time were there
>>> was
>>> a sponsorhip program through OSGeo (I should probably remove the page
>>> completely). As far as I understand, due to the 501(c)(4) status, this is
>>> no
>>> longer possible.
>>> 
>>> So currently they have no direct way of sponsoring GDAL specific
>>> activities,
>>> except sponsoring developers directly. Sponsoring OSGeo is of course a way
>>> of
>>> indirectly sponsoring OSGeo projects, for example to fund the shared IT
>>> infrastructure, or code sprints, but this has a more limited impact on
>>> day-to-
>>> day maintenance activities led by a project: bug triage & fixing,
>>> reviewing &
>>> applying contributions, monitoring and maintenance of coutinuous
>>> integration
>>> environments, user assistance on mailing list, release process, ...
>>> 
>>> I'm not sure if there's a way forward for this. QGIS has for example
>>> established their qgis.org association for activities that are close to
>>> the
>>> past OSGeo project sponsorship. I see there's a GvSIG association too.
>>> Perhaps
>>> other projects with similar needs have adopted similar solutions.
>>> 
>>> I'm not particularly requesting any action from the board. This was just to
>>> share this experience and see if the board has some thoughts about the
>>> topic
>>> in general. For example, if the solution of project-specific associations
>>> is
>>> something that the board is happy with or would encourage, or if it is
>>> indifferent to funding solutions the projects may adopt. Direct funding of
>>> developers is also a solution, although for most activities I mentioned
>>> above,
>>> it can be difficult to get, contrary to funding that is feature oriented.
>>> And
>>> even if you get it, formally, it's funding of developer/company X, and not
>>> of
>>> project Y.
>>> 
>>> By the way, I see the GDAL page points to
>>> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Project_Sponsorship <http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Project_Sponsorship> : I guess this one is no
>>> longer
>>> valid ?
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> 
>>> Even
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Spatialys - Geospatial professional services
>>> http://www.spatialys.com <http://www.spatialys.com/>
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>> 
>> 
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Tim Sutton

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