[gdal-dev] Driver maintenance - long-term solution ?

[Ian Mayo]

One quick thought on finances that I haven't seen presented in this thread.

We've identified that organisations are willing to fund new features -
frequently since the new feature aligns with some business opportunity
for them.

What if the hourly/daily rates for new features included a
"Maintenance tax" - maybe 20%?  This would go into the pot to fund
maintenance.

The benefits of this are:
- new donors (& donation paths) do not have to be found
- new features incur a cost more indicative of through-life costs

Just a thought.
Ian

On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 at 09:35, Paul Harwood <runette at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Just a quick question.
>
> Since the FAANGs were the question, do you know if OSGeo has been vetted and approved as a Foundation by any of the FAANGs?
>
> As I say, when I was involved on the other side for one, they had more than a 2 year lead time for that process (I don't know if that was universal or if they solved that problem). If the answer is yes, then that could be a way forward - and indeed in at least two of FAANGs that I know the employees have virtual "pots" of both money and time that they can donate to approved organisations to "give back" - so appealing to the grass roots could be a way forward.
>
> You might have to spin it as "promoting the value of Geo software to solve world problems" or some such - since as I say paying for free software is questionable legal territory.
>
> On Thu, 14 Jan 2021 at 09:00, Angelos Tzotsos <gcpp.kalxas at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Perhaps we could ask some of these organizations to sponsor GDAL through https://github.com/sponsors/OSGeo which is a recurring sponsorship ?
>>
>> Angelos
>>
>>