[Board] [EXTERNAL] Re: Project sponsoring

Sun Feb 21 07:36:34 PST 2016

Tim,

There is no such bylaw that I'm aware of and we just recently went over the
bylaws at our face-to-face meeting.  Making payments should also be a simple
matter. Perhaps a lot of this was early on in the foundation? There should
be no such issues now (speaking as treasurer for other interested projects).

Mike

----
Michael Smith
OSGeo Foundation Treasurer
treasurer at osgeo.org

From:  Board <board-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> on behalf of Tim Sutton
<tim at kartoza.com>
Date:  Sunday, February 21, 2016 at 9:42 AM
To:  Venkatesh Raghavan <raghavan at media.osaka-cu.ac.jp>
Cc:  OSGeo Board <board at lists.osgeo.org>
Subject:  [EXTERNAL] Re: [Board] Project sponsoring
Resent-From:  Michael Smith <michael.smith at usace.army.mil>

> 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] BlockedBlockedhttp://www.osgeo.org/sponsorship/opportunitiesBlocked
>> 
>> 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
>>>> BlockedBlockedhttp://gdal.org/sponsorship.htmlBlocked, 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 <BlockedBlockedhttp://qgis.orgBlocked>
>>>> 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
>>>> BlockedBlockedhttp://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Project_SponsorshipBlocked : I
>>>> guess this one is no
>>>> longer
>>>> valid ?
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> 
>>>> Even
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> Spatialys - Geospatial professional services
>>>> BlockedBlockedhttp://www.spatialys.comBlocked
>>>> <BlockedBlockedhttp://www.spatialys.com/Blocked>
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>>> 
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> 
> ‹
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Tim Sutton
> 
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> 
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