[OpenLayers-Dev] Spending Sponsorship Money

Tue Nov 4 18:49:38 EST 2008

Hey-

Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> 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.
> 

A -1 vote means that the PSC member "must provide clear reasoning and 
alternate approaches to resolving the problem within the two days."

Why not put it to a vote and let -1 voters provide an alternative?

Tim

> 
> [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
>>>>      > _______________________________________________
>>>>      > Dev mailing list
>>>>      > 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 <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
>>>
> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Dev mailing list
>> Dev at openlayers.org
>> http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> 
> 

-- 
Tim Schaub
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.