list of developers

[Howard Butler]

At 09:41 AM 12/13/2005, Daniel Morissette wrote:
>Howard Butler wrote:
>>While we're at it, can we get the Sponsors page up to date also? 
>><http://ms.gis.umn.edu/development/sponsors>.
>
>I realize that maintaining a list of sponsors like this is a nice to 
>have, but it will never be possible to list every single 
>organization that funded work or features, or to decide on the size 
>of hte contribution to qualify to be listed... and if the list is 
>not complete or accurate then does it make sense to have it at all?
>
>In some cases it's obvious who funded a given feature or significant 
>piece of work (at least the initial funding), but in many cases the 
>initial development is funded by an organization and then refined by 
>others over time through smaller direct or indirect contributions. 
>For instance, OGC support is listed under DMSG, but this work was 
>funded by multiple sources over 5 years, some governments, some 
>private businesses, and some just paid for by DMSG too, then there 
>were in kind contributions by people like Tom and Bart testing OGC 
>support in each release. Listing every single organization is almost 
>imposible, that's almost like listing every customer that DM 
>Solutions and every developer had over the years.
>
>I'm not saying that we should not give credit to funding sources, I 
>would love to do that, I'm just not sure how to practically do it. 
>Has anyone seen other projects that do this well and how they do it?

I agree this is a slippery slope too. But egoboo for funding should 
not be missed either (if those organizations even want it).  There 
are some big ones missing... MN DNR.  NASA.  MN LMIC. Fernando's 
group.  Jani's group.  Some of Frank's raster work.  Plenty of others 
I'm sure I'm missing.

If an organization contributed a chunk of change that caused features 
or improvements to happen that otherwise wouldn't have "just 
happened" on their own, I think they should be recognized.  I 
completely agree that this is really messy though, and it is why we 
have the disclaimer at the bottom of the page.

I'm completely open as to what to do.  Ditch the sponsors page 
altogether, leave it as it currently is, or update it as best we can 
and let groups notify us if they feel they've been missed.

Howard