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

Thu Mar 18 02:15:58 PDT 2021

I didn’t get sent the loomio vote via email. Should I have been?

On Thu, 18 Mar 2021 at 4:52 pm, Dionne Hansen <dionne.hansen at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
>>>>>
>>>> --
Alex Leith
m: 0419189050
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