[Fundraising] sponsor relation points / non-project-directed funding

[Dave McIlhagga]

Hi Jo,

Speaking from the Foundation fundraising standpoint, I think we are 
still a ways off from consideration of approaching Google - and if they 
did sponsor some specific initiative -- that would make a broader pitch 
after the fact that much easier.

I can't really speak from the project-funding perspective however.

Dave


Jo Walsh wrote:
> dear fundraisers,
> 
> I was talking to a friend of mine who is now with Google UK about the
> OSGeo geodata repository project and the ad-hoc research work on
> simplified metadata/discovery that it has wound up encouraging. 
> He suggested that I apply to Google for sponsorship of some library
> development and packaging work, that they'd be receptive to this stuff.
> 
> Now before I start working on a one-page proposal / running this by
> participants, I wanted to sanitycheck here about who else is talking to
> Google about what and whether this idea makes anyone go 'eek!' 
> 
> Potential conflicts of interest?
> 
> - are Google likely potential candidates for gold sponsorship? 
>   I would definitely want to pitch this as "an OSGeo application" but
>   don't want to muddy the waters with others maybe talking to them.
> - Google funded Geoserver (and by extension GeoTools?) to implement a
>   KML connector recently. Part of the repository work involves wanting
>   to improve more OWS client libraries in different languages -
>   specifically I would want to support improvements to SeanG's OWSLib 
>   as it's about the closest to GeoTools in python and we've been using it a lot. 
> cheers,
> 
> 
> jo
> 
>