[GRASS-PSC] Moving sponsoring to Open Collective

Fri Sep 3 23:53:03 PDT 2021

Dear Moritz, dear All,

(as a user) I wonder if this new way can facilitate to "sponsor" work on
specific issues/user-needs.

In example, in issue https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/issues/1616, 
Maximilian
Stahlberg would like to be able to catch signals (i.e. SIGINT) with(in) 
a
Python the script to perform on-demand tasks such as reporting the 
current
status. He proposes a solution as well. Say a developer is interested in 
fixing
this and he sets a cost for it. The user decides to sponsor this 
specific work
and things happen.

Would this be something worth considering for the GRASS GIS development 
team?
Is there a way actually to connect https://opencollective.com with
https://github.com/sponsors? GitHub has already an account
https://opencollective.com/github.

Cheers, Nikos

---

On 2021-09-03 16:02, Moritz Lennert wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> As has been discussed in the past, we have now an active Open
> Collective account which can be used to receive donations. This means
> that we can stop using the PayPal Money Pool linked to my personal
> PayPal account.
> 
> Our fiscal host on Open Collective is OSGeo. Thanks to Michael Smith,
> the OSGeo treasurer, for his support.
> 
> Below is a first draft of an email I suggest to send to -announce and
> other mailing lists. As you can see, we highlight a particular company
> donation that we received at the beginning of the summer (but we were
> waiting with the announcement until the Open Collective system was in
> place).
> 
> Please let me know if you have any remarks or suggestions concerning 
> this email.
> 
> Moritz
> 
> 
> ***********Announcement mail to be sent********************
> 
> Subject: GRASS GIS moves to Open Collective for collecting donations
> and thanks its many financial contributors
> 
> In order to make money donations easier, the GRASS GIS project has
> decided to use the Open Collective platform with the Open Source
> Geospatial (OSGeo) Foundation as its fiscal host:
> https://opencollective.com/grass. You can donate money via credit
> card, PayPal, or bank transfer (US account - for EU account please
> contact us). This new platform replaces our old PayPal Money Pool.
> 
> Although most of the work on GRASS GIS happens on a voluntary basis
> (or donated by organizations and companies in the form of working time
> of their staff), money donations are very important for the
> development of GRASS GIS as they allow us to organize face-to-face
> coding sessions (sprints), finance infrastucture needs (web site, etc)
> and sometimes pay developers to work on important but tedious bug
> fixes. The new platform should allow both individuals and companies or
> organizations to contribute to the GRASS GIS budget.
> 
> We would also like to take the opportunity to thank those who have
> already contributed money in the last years. You can see a complete
> list of sponsors on https://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Sponsors.
> Whatever the amount your help is deeply appreciated !
> 
> As an example of a company support we wish to highlight the very
> generous donation recently received from Bohannan Huston, Inc.
> (https://bhinc.com/). We asked Robert S. Dzur, Vice President Spatial
> Data, to explain their motivation behind supporting the project. Here
> is what he has to say:
> 
> "Our use of GRASS GIS is primarily related to areas of data inventory,
> visualization, quality assessment and analysis.  As data producers, we
> are regularly confronted with production challenges related to
> ingesting and visualizing high data volumes of imagery, elevation /
> point cloud and feature data.  GRASS GIS gives us the ability to
> quickly handle large datasets at any point in the production stage.
> For example, we use r.in.lidar and its capacity to read large
> multi-billion point datasets from a text list and create derivative
> elevation data products often to support both quality assurance tasks
> as well as base maps for vector feature data development.  GRASS GIS's
> multiplatform (Windows, Mac, Linux) support and integration with
> GDAL/OGR is also a plus for us.  GRASS GIS gives us direct control,
> access, and the ability to interact with our data at very granular
> levels.  My colleague, Dennis Sandin also reminded me that one of the
> greatest benefits of GRASS GIS is that its environments gives us a
> plethora of options for manipulating data and testing/designing our
> automation/workflow processes. We also appreciate the GRASS GIS legacy
> and its long history of development dating back to its genesis with
> the US Army Corps of Engineers and the continued scientific
> foundations of its applications.
> 
> Over the past few years, we have been making a concerted effort on two
> fronts to 1) support the geospatial open-source community and 2)
> reduce our dependence on commercial software.  Typically, our support
> had been through sponsoring the broader community through code sprint
> events.  Last year, however, with code sprints on-hold we decided to
> contribute to the QGIS crowdfunding campaign for point cloud
> functionality.  At the same time, we attempted to make a corresponding
> reduction in our commercial licensing contracts.  This year we have
> also been trying to reach out to some of our key clients and teach
> team how to use GRASS GIS on their own computing infrastructure.
> Specifically, we engaged with one client to teach them how to use
> r.in.pdal to develop elevation range maps from LiDAR point cloud data
> as a complementary data element in their NDVI analysis to identify
> vegetation canopy.  Another client was interested in merging DEM data
> of differing source lineage and quality and we conducted a basic how
> to session on GRASS GIS with them and shared details about r.patch and
> r.patch.smooth.  Given those recent technical exchange efforts locally
> with some of our clients, our experience with GRASS GIS, and our
> objective to support a specific open-source project, this year we
> decided to contribute to the GRASS GIS project.
> 
> If there are companies or organizations like us who are not already
> using GRASS GIS to improve their workflows, they should be."
> 
> Convinced you want to support GRASS GIS financially ? Go to
> https://opencollective.com/grass !
> 
> The GRASS GIS development team
> ~
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