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

Wed Mar 17 22:52:10 PDT 2021

I agree, I think ongoing monthly donation is the best option because it
provides some stability for the maintainer.
If we sponsored for $50 per month it would be $600 for the year, at $100
per month it would be $1200.

$600 for the year is closer to the initial proposal.
If we wanted to do donation matching as well we could front up $400 for
that to see if the community would also donate.
The total cash outlay from our funds would then be $1000 - which sounds
reasonable to me.

If I get a few agreements I could put this up as a new loomio vote and
scrap the old one.

On Thu, 18 Mar 2021 at 15:37, Edoardo Neerhut <eneerhut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sounds like we're all good to make a donation given it's under $1,000 @Dionne
> Hansen <dionne.hansen at gmail.com>.
> Would we better off making a one time donation here or becoming a
> monthly sponsor at around $50 or $100?
>
> I'd personally be in favour of ongoing donations as it's more sustainable.
>
> Sorry to further complicate, but hadn't considered this option earlier.
>
> Whatever we choose, I think we should just sponsor and then work out
> mechanics of matching donations later on.
>
> On Wed, 17 Mar 2021 at 01:36, Dionne Hansen <dionne.hansen at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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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