[mapguide-internals] Sponsorship Funding and Allocation of Funds

[Trevor Wekel]

Hello fellow PSC members,

In an effort to make MapGuide Open Source a sustainable project, I would like to start a discussion on funding for MapGuide Open Source.  How much money do we need to sustain the project and how do we attract sponsors?  I believe this would be a good discussion to have on mapguide-internals for the sake of openness.

Since the inception of the Sponsorship and Donation program in August 2009, the MapGuide Open Source Project has received less than $1500 USD in funding.  This is not sustainable.

From the Sponsorship page http://mapguide.osgeo.org/sponsorship, we have a long list of items where we can apply funding:

* Addressing bug reports - reproducing then fixing or passing on to another developer.
* Extending, and running the test suite.
* Compiling and managing appropriate data sets for testing.
* Improving documentation.
* Other improvements to the software.
* General user support on the mailing list.
* Rental of hardware and/or virtual machines for a multi-platform build and test environment.
* Maintenance and setup of a code review tool.

In addition to these items, we have a presence on the OSGeo LiveDVD.  This DVD is used for conferences and in some cases training purposes.  We can add the following items to the list:

* Maintenance of MapGuide on LiveDVD
* Documentation and Training Material
* Maintaining automated builds for all supported platforms (may include Fdo)


I would like to prioritize and put estimates towards some of these items.  This will give us a better understanding of the funding needs for MapGuide Open Source.  Since I am maintaining builds infrastructure, I can provide estimates for a couple of items:

* Rental of hardware and/or virtual machines for a multi-platform build and test environment.
- We are currently maintaining 6 virtual machines (7GB ram, 250GB disk) behind an SSL VPN firewall.
- $8000/year for internet connectivity, hardware cost, software licensing, and virtual machine backup

* Maintaining automated builds for all supported platforms (may include Fdo)
- Over the past year I have donated 120 hours of my time to supporting MapGuide.  Builds have been disappointingly sporadic.
- For daily builds, a more realistic allocation of time is likely 5 hours/week or 250 hours/year.
- $18000/year assuming a rate of $75/hour for a "junior/intermediate" developer.

I believe the two items list above are a bare minimum to sustain the project.  It is very difficult to drive innovation without having regular builds available.  If additional funding is available, it would be good to prioritize the other items on the list.  Here's one prioritization to start the discussion:

* Addressing bug reports - reproducing then fixing or passing on to another developer.
- Timely bug fixes will be important for success of regular builds.
- How many RC's are we going to have for MapGuide 2.2?  The bugs just seem to keep coming.

* Extending, and running the test suite.
* Compiling and managing appropriate data sets for testing.
- A better unit test suite will catch more issues at build time and help ensure stable builds.

* Improving documentation
* Documentation and Training Material
- These go hand in hand, will reduce noise on mapguide-users and improve usability

* Maintenance of MapGuide on LiveDVD
- If we have good docs and good data sets, we should get it on the LiveDVD and out to the world.

* General user support on the mailing list.
* Other improvements to the software.
* Maintenance and setup of a code review tool.

Comments are welcome.  Since funding is a fairly important topic, I will write up an RFC once we have a little feedback.  A prioritized list of costs may help the community understand why Sponsorship and Donations are so important.
 
Regards,
Trevor