[OSGeo-Discuss] Are there proposed ways to raise funds for OSGeo projects?

[Duarte Carreira]

I like the page for PostGIS Raster coordinating the roadmap and funding/dev.time [1].

Regarding a tool/site, I haven't seen one that would personally inspire me to donate, or help me convince my company to donate. They feel disconnected from the project itself, and honestly they give this image of impersonal, bank-ish approach. Also, the money raised seems to indicate poor success rates.

I feel that for a project, in my particular case, the easiest way to have a positive funding decision in the company I work for would be:


1)      Receive a letter from OSGeo/Project campaign to raise funds, stating a few facts of life in FOSS development, and pointing out the benefits of the model to all users/community, ending with an emphasis on community efforts where everyone has its role (users/companies and developers/project stewards/osgeo). To make things even easier to "stakeholders" present a few "common" donation values... (you know, like a checkbox list ;)

2)      Allow for optionally directing donated funds to available roadmap features or existing bugs (not sure how this would work out in several scenarios, like when minimum funding is never reached...)

3)      Have a project page where we can see how funding is working, progress is made, who is donating, etc. (similar to [1]), but this is a plus, and not really a requirement. But it would be nice to be informed of any progress done to the selected features/bugs when/if it happened

I can see this approach working in different organizations around here. And in a periodical basis.

Just my 2 cents...

Duarte

[1] - http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/wiki/WKTRaster/PlanningAndFunding

De: Duarte Carreira [mailto:DCarreira at edia.pt]
Enviada: sexta-feira, 3 de Junho de 2011 10:55
Para: OSGeo Discussions
Assunto: [OSGeo-Discuss] Are there proposed ways to raise funds for OSGeo projects?

Have there been any discussions about ways of raising funds for projects under the OSGeo umbrella?

For instance, annual fund raising campaigns like Wikipedia does? Or letters/emails asking for donations to known "significant" users as associations sometimes do? Or using sites specialized in linking users requests to developers? I suppose this is to be done by each project individually...

What are the current opinions?

Regards,
Duarte
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