[Gdal-dev] Motion: Adopt OSGeo Project Sponsorship Program

[Howard Butler]

At 02:52 PM 11/6/2006, Daniel Morissette wrote:
>I vote -0.
>
>I am not completely objected to the idea and won't veto it, but I am 
>a bit worried about the impact that having to manage sponsorship 
>money can have on the PSC members. I have already explained my point 
>of view on this whole sponsorship idea on the mapserver-dev list so 
>I won't repeat it here. The thread can be found in the mapserver-dev 
>archives at:
>http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-Fwd%3A--OSGeo-Discuss--Project-Sponsorship-Proposal-%28call-for-feedback%29-p6104462.html
>
>I realize that the GDAL situation is a bit different since Frank has 
>been funding people to do maintenance work on GDAL in the past and 
>the hope is probably that sponsorship money can pay for that kind of 
>support in the future (which would make complete sense). However, as 
>GDAL grows from a benevolent-dictatorship to a PSC-driven project 
>the concerns that I expressed about sponsorship vs MapServer will 
>also apply to GDAL.

I myself doubt that the OSGeo project sponsorship program will 
attract the fire hose of funding that Paul Ramsey speaks of, but it 
would be nice to have a garden hose of opportunity available to us.

Fogel makes some great points in his money chapter that you might 
find relevant <http://producingoss.com/html-chunk/money.html> and 
<http://producingoss.com/html-chunk/contracting.html>.  I discussed 
some of these things in my Open Development spiel 
<http://hobu.biz/index_html/open-development>.

Howard