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

Sat Mar 20 03:04:10 PDT 2021

Hi,
Great initiative!
Re Point 3 in Dionne initial email, by raising awareness of how
contributions can be made, it will help overcome  the initial barrier to
start for companies who aren't normally operating in this space.

I think it's also worth exploring the barriers government agencies might
face to being able to contribute via donation to open source projects. It
will be complicated by the different procurement policies in place at the
different levels and within the different jurisdictions. Generally in my
experience. paying for specific work that the agency needs to be don by a
contractor is doable, but I am not so familiar with the donation/sponsor
route. Might do some digging.

Trish

On Thu, Mar 18, 2021 at 8:16 PM Alex Leith <alexgleith at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Oceania mailing list
> Oceania at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/oceania
>
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