Fwd: [OSGeo-Discuss] Project Sponsorship Proposal (call for feedback)

[Frank Warmerdam]

Daniel Morissette wrote:
> As I'm sure you realize, the people who are the most likely to be able 
> to use this money efficiently are for the most part the voting members 
> of the PSC. So we end up with PSC members voting on money allocation for 
> themselves, with all the appearence of conflicts of interest and other 
> politics and possible tensions that may come out of that.

Daniel,

I have to admit I'm concerned about that too.  In the case of GDAL I
wasn't planning to propose any funding directly to PSC members because
of the apparent conflict of interest, though I wouldn't rule it out.
In fact, in the GDAL case I have avoided proposing Mateusz for the PSC
because I'd like to avoid potential conflicts of interest in contracting
him for maintenance.

This is more problematic in the case of MapServer where we have a larger
PSC, and so more of the obvious contractee's are on the PSC.

> When we add foundation money into the mix, then I'll have to be careful 
> with my votes and keep in mind that if I turn down too many proposals 
> then I risk seeing my own proposals turned down as well. 

I do have a concern that it may be hard for the PSC to effectively manage
money because we will all be hesitant to turn down proposals for fear of
negative feelings.  This could make it hard to ensure that the money
is kept for the really important needs.

 > Plus we all work for different rates, how do we account for that?

Well, presumably proposals will all be fixed price so it would be
judged on the overall value.

> Finally, some people who never had any real 
> interest in contributing to MapServer so far may decide to submit 
> proposals only because they smelled the money opportunities, which would 
> be unfair to those who have invested thousands of hours of volounteer 
> time in the project.

Well, I'm quite concerned that those who have volunteered may be less
willing to do so in the future if they see others getting funding for
work.  However, I don't think there is anything inherently bad about
the possibility of funding bringing folks out who hadn't been involved
before.

> Are there examples of other software projects/foundations that work this 
> way and that we could look at? I'd be interested to see real life 
> examples to find out whether those issues are real or just my imagination.

That is a good question, and to be honest I'm not very familiar with
anything similar.  There are big organizations, like the GNOME Foundation,
that fund a variety of development but that isn't very similar to this.

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org