[OpenLayers-Dev] Spending Sponsorship Money

[Tim Schaub]

Hey-

pspencer at dmsolutions.ca wrote:
> I was having difficulty trying to respond to this thread, Schuyler has 
> gone ahead and captured what I was thinking but finding hard to put into 
> words! 
> 
> I don't think we should over-engineer this, or prematurely optimize it 
> either.  I believe that we should bring this to a vote based on what 
> Chris has put together, and if the PSC agrees then we execute the plan 
> as it stands.  If potential sponsors come back and say the wording or 
> objectives are too vague then we can adjust as necessary or encourage 
> them to fund specific things directly through individual contractors.

I agree.

The language in the sponsorship document that Chris put together [1] has 
been available for review/modification for a long time [2].

John, you have the most specific ideas about changes that you would like 
to see - but have not touched (changed) the document [3].  Please make 
any changes to that document that would satisfy you - while acting as 
any other member of an open development community and respecting what 
work others have already put into it.

Seems like another day should be enough time for anybody to make changes 
to that document so that we can vote on it.  Please speak up (anybody) 
if one day is not enough time to get your desired changes into the document.

We're all busy people with real work requirements.  We don't benefit by 
taxing ourselves further with long lists of tasks for which we are not 
compensated.

Tim

[1] http://svn.openlayers.org/project/sponsorship/sponsoring

[2] 22 days

[3] http://trac.openlayers.org/log/project/sponsorship/sponsoring



> 
> I also believe that sponsorship through OSGeo is a good thing, although 
> I don't know if the benefits outweigh the cost.  But it does feel like 
> the right way to do things - avoiding OSGeo to keep a few extra bucks 
> doesn't seem to be in the spirit of things.  I'm not educated enough to 
> be strongly opinioned on this though.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Paul
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Schuyler Erle" <schuyler at nocat.net>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 5, 2008 7:41am
> To: "John R. Frank" <john.frank at metacarta.com>
> Cc: "OpenLayers-Dev" <dev at openlayers.org>
> Subject: Re: [OpenLayers-Dev] Spending Sponsorship Money
> 
> On Tue, 2008-11-04 at 19:50 -0500, John R. Frank wrote:
>  > I would like to see a list of the benefits that we hope
>  > would come from spending money. With such a list in place, the PSC 
> should
>  > vote on the various parts of it --- at least high-level categories if 
> not
>  > specific target benefits. Ideally, this would result in a ranking of the
>  > most important things that money could buy the project.
> 
> Unless I'm mistaken, we already have a list of benefits that we hope
> would come from spending money. Quoting from the sponsorship doc that
> crschmidt already prepared at
> http://svn.openlayers.org/project/sponsorship/sponsoring:
> 
> "The possible tasks that such funding would achieve:
> 
> * Triage of bug reports, i.e. reproducing, then fixing or passing on to
> another developer a particular bug.
> * Extending the test suite for existing and new features to help
> improve library quality and prevent regressions.
> * Improving documentation to lower the bar to entry for the project.
> * General improvements to the software, especially as they meet the
> needs
> of the wider OpenLayers community.
> * Funding participation in organized project activities, such as code
> sprints or other directed OpenLayers-improvement tasks.
> 
> "Sponsorship funds may also be used to contract for specific
> improvements to
> OpenLayers, to provision resources such as web hosting, or to support
> project
> promotion."
> 
> I'm really happy with this list as it already stands. Does anyone have
> any qualms with it?
> 
> Basically -- Christopher, with all due respect, you were off to a really
> strong start with this document, and I don't think you or anyone should
> be discouraged by the discussion that has gone on around it. OpenLayers
> owes its existence to MetaCarta's support, but MetaCarta is hardly the
> only company out there that will support the project financially towards
> the goals that have already been articulated.
> 
> What are we waiting for? ;)
> 
> SDE
> 
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-- 
Tim Schaub
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.