[OpenLayers-Dev] Spending Sponsorship Money

Tue Nov 4 18:35:43 EST 2008

On Tue, Nov 04, 2008 at 05:26:01PM -0600, Erik Uzureau wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 5:18 PM, Tim Schaub <tschaub at opengeo.org> wrote:
> 
> > Plus, as discussed previously, I think the topic of "spending
> > sponsorship money" is one that we should task ourselves with (as a PSC)
> > when we actually get some money.
> >
> 
> So actually this is exactly the issue. In our discussion with MetaCarta, the
> clear sentiment was "we're not going to give you money if we don't know how
> it will be spent". Which was the first blow to the sponsorship steam... and
> I think that whatever was left has just sort of petered out.
> 
> Maybe part of that is that the originator of the idea, our very own
> Christopher McWilliamson III Schmidt is in Japan devoting his free time to
> promoting OL.... but I think in general there's just not enough independent
> interest in this or available resources (read: volunteers) to be willing to
> put in the leg work to get this working...

I have no problem with legwork, but when two members of the PSC -- John
and Cameron -- say that their support for the idea is contingent on
coming up with metrics for how we should spend the money before we have
it, I don't see a solution.

For example, Cameron suggested that "Increase product quality", "Make
the developer community more effective" 'can be measured'[1]. I would
strongly disagree with this statement, but I don't have any evidence
that can prove my opinion in this case. So, my current beliefthat at
least one, and possibly two, members of the PSC don't believe that we
should officially sanction OpenLayers participation in the Sponsorship
program until we outline measurable goals -- in one case, unspecified,
and in the other case, for things that I explicitly don't see a way to
measure.

So, with that in mind, I don't see a way to proceed effectively with
participating in the sponsorship program; perhaps I'm misunderstanding 
the opinions of these emails, but they were enough to convince me that a
motion on the project sponsorship would fail, so I didn't bother to put
one together.

[1] http://openlayers.org/pipermail/dev/2008-October/003683.html

-- Chris
> Maybe time will prove us wrong, but it just sort of feels "dead".
> 
> Erik
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >
> > If we want to vote on a list of potential uses for money (in the hopes
> > that this list will loose the purse strings of potential sponsors), I
> > would vote for an order something like this:
> >
> > 1) code sprints
> > 2) documentation
> > 3) maintainer/marketing stuff
> >
> > I don't have a preference on the order of the maintainer position and
> > marketing stuff.  I would just prefer to see code and doc development
> > placed above t-shirts.
> >
> > Tim
> >
> > Again - I think shirts are cool.  And if we could make some money
> > selling shirts, I think that would be great.  I just don't think
> > spending money on shirts is the best use of limited (or hypothetical)
> > resources.
> >
> >
> > Erik Uzureau wrote:
> > > ...well, I think that all this was just about enough to kill any
> > > momentum we may have had going there
> > > with this sponsorship idea. As usual, too many conflicting ideas and too
> > > little resources (resources!)
> > > to implement them with. Just another day in freesoftwarelandia.:-)
> > >
> > > Seems to me like the best thing we can salvage from this is maybe a
> > > reform of the PSC? I'll send a new thread.
> > >
> > > e
> > >
> > > On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 5:44 PM, Tim Schaub <tschaub at opengeo.org
> > > <mailto:tschaub at opengeo.org>> wrote:
> > >
> > >     Hey-
> > >
> > >     John R. Frank wrote:
> > >      >> I do want to speak up on behalf of t-shirts though!
> > >      >
> > >      >> don't be too hesitant to spend a bit of money on the team!
> > >      >
> > >      >
> > >      > I completely agree.  T-shirts are a powerful tool in achieving
> > >     many of the
> > >      > project's goals.  I hope to see the PSC agreeing on a list of
> > >     those goals
> > >      > on our way to the t-shirt store.
> > >      >
> > >
> > >     Can we have a separate thread on t-shirts (and mugs, hoodies, knit
> > caps,
> > >     etc)?
> > >
> > >     I don't disagree that t-shirts are neat.  And I think putting a link
> > on
> > >     our site to buy a t-shirt through some service that kicks back some
> > of
> > >     the money to the project is a good idea.  But I would be pretty
> > >     disappointed if we *spent* (sponsorship) money on making things like
> > >     t-shirts.
> > >
> > >     http://tinyurl.com/5vsx49
> > >
> > >      >
> > >      > jrf
> > >      > _______________________________________________
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> > >      > Dev at openlayers.org <mailto:Dev at openlayers.org>
> > >      > http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> > >
> > >
> > >     --
> > >     Tim Schaub
> > >     OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
> > >     Expert service straight from the developers.
> > >     _______________________________________________
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> > >     Dev at openlayers.org <mailto:Dev at openlayers.org>
> > >     http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Tim Schaub
> > OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
> > Expert service straight from the developers.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Dev mailing list
> > Dev at openlayers.org
> > http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> >

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-- 
Christopher Schmidt
MetaCarta