[OSGeo-Discuss] Return on Equity

[Sean Gillies]

Dave Patton wrote:
> Howard Butler wrote:
> 
>> Most of OSGeo's measurable successes to date have been volunteer 
>> efforts, not primarily financially-backed ones.  The OSGeo Journal 
>> effort, Google Summer of Code administration, the Geodata committee's 
>> efforts, and even much of our system administration to keep the lights 
>> on for developer tools like Subversion/Trac have been volunteer 
>> enterprises (please help flesh out this list, these are only those I 
>> am most aware of, I know there have been many others).  However, I 
>> think financial resources, both in the capacity to generate 
>> sponsorship money and the ability to spend it wisely, are what 
>> provides the opportunity to set OSGeo apart and provide the 
>> volunteerism leverage.
> 
>> When Autodesk came in and helped bootstrap OSGeo, it was fairly clear 
>> that our financial existence would not be an indefinite expenditure -- 
>> we would have to exist on our own.  Additionally, to meet 503c3 
>> requirements, we cannot have a situation where we have a majority 
>> benefactor as we do now.  We're almost two years down the road into 
>> bootstrapping, and our majority benefactor situation has budged very 
>> little.  As far as I know, our only significant incoming sponsorship 
>> dollars beyond Autodesk are the "targeted development" vehicles like 
>> those that pay for a permanent maintainer for GDAL.
> 
> There has certainly been a lot of volunteer effort by the organizers
> of the FOSS4G 2007 conference, and the efforts of those volunteers will
> continue through to the end of the conference, when the ball gets
> picked up by the organizers of next year's conference.
> 
> The actual dollar number that you come up with will depend on various
> factors, but you can argue that both the 500+ registrants for the
> conference, and the conference's Sponsors/Exhibitors are all
> contributing financially to OSGeo.
> 
> The Sponsors presumably wouldn't be spending money on the conference
> if they didn't see value for their companies. Maybe it's an opportunity
> for the new board to frame some questions at their meeting the day
> before the conference, and to ask those questions of Sponsors during
> the conference, to try and facilitate future opportunities for OSGeo
> sponsorship by a variety of corporations, in a variety of ways.
> 

I'm contributing financially to OSGeo? How much? I don't remember 
reading anywhere on the conference website that the event is about OSGeo 
revenue.

Sean