[OpenLayers-Dev] Entering OSGeo Project Sponsorship

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 11:08:51AM +0200, Eric Lemoine wrote:
> This is interesting! In particular that could really help improve the
> project doc, infrastructure, etc. which are key to keep OpenLayers
> successful. I like that.
> 
> I guess my main question is: how will the PSC decide where the funds
> will go? "where" here means "to what tasks/projects" *and* "to what
> organisations/individuals". Will the PSC be the only decision maker,
> or will the sponsors also participate in the decisions?

I hesitate to provide sponsors direct control over the usage of funds.
The reason for this is simply that I would prefer to not be 'beholden'
to the sponsors for how we use funds directly. That said, I expect that
the first priority for any sponsorship-related tasks would be to meet
the needs of the sponsors as much as possible: This is the reason for
the survey mentioned in the sponsorship doc: "Sponsor input on project
focus and direction will be solicited via regular sponsor surveys."

I also think that the way the funds would be spent would be discussed on
the dev mailing list first; Something like "Okay, we have $x in the
bank. We have resources available to us at $x/hr for particular tasks.
We have these tasks to do: Should we spend our money on this?"

So, to answer the question: Things sponsors want would get a bump in
priority, but not an absolute one. Decisions would be made by the PSC in
consultation with the developers list. In part, our options for 'who' may 
be limited by funds: my expectation is that we would pursue tasks
similar to the any organization would pursue contracters to do a task
(by taking a look at the task and then looking at who would be best for
the money).

Does that answer the question?

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
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