[OSGeo Oceania] [Oceania-Board] Sponsoring GDAL maintainer

Wed Mar 17 01:36:02 PDT 2021

So are we thinking we match donations up to a certain amount using Tito in
the short term, and then the long term plan is get donations from
organisations. (Thanks for attaching that donation info, I had no idea!)
For the short term plan, is everyone happy with the $500 of OSGeo Oceania
funds to match community donations up to that amount in Tito?

On Wed, 17 Mar 2021 at 18:31, Edoardo Neerhut <eneerhut at gmail.com> wrote:

> *GDAL*
> Thanks for kicking this off Dionne. It's exactly the kind of initiative we
> should be supporting.
> @Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com> Tito seems perfect for this. Great
> idea.
>
> *Corporate sponsorships and donations*
> This is definitely something we should set up. OpenStreetMap US recently
> received an $80,000 donation from craigslist which I think indicates the
> level of interest in our community and the tools we support/enable. There
> are countless organisations using OS GIS and OpenStreetMap in our region
> who have the funds and willingness to support the community. Sounds like we
> should look at the legal options and then just set up something simple to
> begin with using PayPal, Stripe or similar.
>
> [image: image.png]
>
> On Tue, 16 Mar 2021 at 02:08, Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm with John on this one, I'd like to kick some funds in too.
>>
>> I wonder if a broader sponsorship drive, where OSGeo Oceania can 'sell' a
>> kind of corporate support to orgs in Australia and pool funds is a good
>> idea?
>>
>> Let's keep this simple though. From a finance perspective, I can set up
>> something in Tito, perhaps, where we can sell a 'pay what you want' and
>> OSGeo Oceania could match, and we kick over a chunk of change to support
>> GDAl development :-)
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> On Tue, 16 Mar 2021 at 18:46, John Bryant <johnwbryant at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Great initiative, thanks Dionne!
>>>
>>> I'm totally in support of anything we can do in this region to help make
>>> open source more sustainable. If OSGeo Oceania sets up a matching fund and
>>> helps identify productive ways to spend it (not just on GDAL, but perhaps
>>> on an array of important projects), I would like to contribute. I hope any
>>> business or org in the region that benefits from using open source would
>>> consider contributing.
>>>
>>> The QGIS SIG was initiated to help with the procurement problem you
>>> mention, where many organisations can't make a "donation" but can justify
>>> spending on a "membership". We haven't kicked this off yet, but will soon.
>>> Hopefully there will be some useful lessons learned along the way.
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>> John
>>>
>>> On Tue, 16 Mar 2021 at 15:11, Dionne Hansen <dionne.hansen at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello OSGeo Oceania,
>>>> I'm addressing this to the board, the OSGeo oceania members and to the
>>>> wider community. It has come to my attention that  a message sent on the
>>>> goal-dev mailing list here:
>>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/gdal-dev/2021-January/053302.html -
>>>> which highlights a problem with burnout among the GDAL maintainers and
>>>> outlines the difficulties of maintaining a tool like GDAL when one is only
>>>> paid for developing new features but not for maintaining the project,
>>>> responding to the mailing list, bug fixing, or new releases.
>>>>
>>>> That message further outlines ways of overcoming the problem of burning
>>>> out the project maintainers. Including getting more people to participate
>>>> and providing a revenue stream so that a maintainer only has to do the
>>>> maintenance job.
>>>>
>>>> Even Rouault (the current maintainer of the project with over 19,838
>>>> commits) put up a call for sponsorship (
>>>> https://github.com/sponsors/rouault) for his activities maintaining
>>>> and improving GDAL and PROJ. He is also a developer of QGIS, MapServer,
>>>> libtiff, libgeotiff, and cpenjpeg.
>>>>
>>>> I feel that OSGeo Oceania should be doing our part to help with revenue
>>>> streams to safeguard the maintainer against overloading and burnout.
>>>>
>>>> 1) As a stop gap effort I propose that we donate $500 to Even for
>>>> maintenance purposes.
>>>>
>>>> 2) I think we should discuss if we can help in any other capacity - ie.
>>>> amplify the need to donate money to projects like these, matching donated
>>>> amounts up to a certain limit?
>>>>
>>>> 3) Discuss the barriers that our respective organisations have to
>>>> donating maintenance funds to these projects. Ie. my employer could not
>>>> sponsor via GitHub without breaking procurement rules. Is there anything
>>>> that OSGeo Oceania can do to make maintenance sponsorship easier?
>>>>
>>>> I'd appreciate a discussion about what we can do to help in the near
>>>> and long term and I will set up a loomio thread for the $500.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Dionne Hansen
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Oceania-Board mailing list
>>>> Oceania-Board at lists.osgeo.org
>>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/oceania-board
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Oceania mailing list
>>> Oceania at lists.osgeo.org
>>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/oceania
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Alex Leith
>> m: 0419189050
>> _______________________________________________
>> Oceania mailing list
>> Oceania at lists.osgeo.org
>> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/oceania
>>
>
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