[OpenLayers-Dev] Entering OSGeo Project Sponsorship

[Cameron Shorter]

Chris,
I'm very supportive of the Open Source Sponsorship concept for all the 
reasons you have mentioned. In fact, I blogged on the topic a while 
back, including reference to Openlayers' relationship with Metacarta 
(which I hope I've described accurately)
http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com/2008/06/effective-open-source-sponsorship-many.html

While I think that sponsorship is achievable, I expect it will be more 
challenging to source $$ than via the standard pay per feature business 
model.

It also might be worth revisiting who controls the project.
When I was discussing the project sponsorship model with potential Open 
Source sponsors in Australian government, there was a strong desire for 
the sponsors to have representation on the Project Steering Committees 
of the projects they were interested in.

Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 08:47:51PM +0200, Kristian Thy wrote:
>   
>> On Sun, Oct 12, Christopher Schmidt wrote:
>>     
>>> 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.
>>>       
>> Organizations with specific needs can still pay developers consulting
>> fees to fix their problems. 
>>     
>
> Sure.
>
>   
>> Indeed, short of having money in surplus and no specific needs (i.e. for
>> reasons of altruism) I fail to see why I, as a corporation, would give
>> money through OSGeo instead of just paying someone to scratch my itch
>> directly (you know how just rubbing your back through your t-shirt is
>> never quite satisfactory?).
>>     
>
> Scratching specific itches is beneficial for when you have a specific
> itch. However, the success of OpenLayers as a project can achieve more
> than that: things that you would have never thought that you'd need
> scratched might get done. Things like better memory management, better
> speed (fewer CPU cycles), improved documentation all allow for the
> project as a whole to succeed in ways that few specific organizations
> have a strong individual desire for, but a more general fund might build
> up enough support for that they get priority.
>
> Additionally, although there are a large number of OpenLayers
> consultants of all shapes and sizes, the number of people who are core
> developers in the project is relatively small. With funds being managed
> by the project directly, those developers are likely to play a key role
> in the design and implementation of plans that are paid for by
> sponsorship funds -- and that kind of difference can make the difference
> between a great patch for you and a great patch for the project. (I've
> seen enough good designs come out of the OpenLayers development team
> that I'd generally say that stuff which is worked on by the core
> developers will always be of a relatively high quality compared to
> individual contributors.) Since most of the core contributors to the
> project work for organizations where their consulting time is unlikely
> to be something you can get ahold of trivially, giving money to the
> project directly might have a more direct correlation on improvement of
> the project.
>
> Another thing is that there are many organizations which based a fair
> amount of their success upon the success of the OpenLayers project. For
> example, the Ordnance Survey Open Space project depends critically on
> OpenLayers, since a large part of their product is simply OpenLayers
> with some additional configuration wrapped up into it. With that being
> the case, though OSOS doesn't have any specific needs from the OL
> project (or at least, we aren't aware of them), they still depend on
> openLayers continuing to succeed as a project -- supporting new browsers
> as they come out, improving upon things which might be bugs, etc.
> Organizations like this may not have any specific itch to scratch, but
> also don't have the resources to replace OpenLayers should the project
> fail, so it may be in their best interests to support the project
> monetarily to ensure continued community success.
>
> By acting as a sponsor, organizations also get to use this fact in their
> marketing materials. In the same way that purchasing a sponsorship slot
> at a conference gets your name and logo in a prominent place in
> conference materials, purchasing a sponsorship for OpenLayers gets your
> name and logo in what may be a prominent place on our website/in our
> marketing materials. It means that people can recognize that your
> organization directly supports the OpenLayers project. to some extent,
> some of MetaCarta's efforts in OpenLayers as a contributor to the
> project can be seen as a marketing cost: a full one third of the search
> results for MetaCarta on Google are tied directly to the OpenLayers
> project. (32,100 out of 102,000) When I meet people at a conference, the
> thing I usually hear isn't "MetaCarta... you guys are the search engine
> company, right?" It's "MetaCarta: You guys do OpenLayers!" Sponsorship
> allows for organizations which don't have the same level of developer
> resources to get the same kind of participation in a project that they
> support. 
>
> Lastly, I expect that any sponsors will get more control over future
> direction of the project via their feedback than people who aren't
> directly suppoting the project. Certainly, my current answer to most
> questions about "When will feature $x be done?" Are "When you write a
> patch for it." However, given sponsorship, I think that there is a
> chance that features that a large enough number of sponsors are in favor
> of to be given priority -- and if developers still aren't interested, we
> have cash that might be able to be thrown at the project. And In the
> same way that I'm more likely to spend time helping someone who has
> demonstrated the ability to help themselves -- by patching code,
> offering documentation, or simply contributing to the mailing list --
> I expect there is a certain level of credit you get for being a project
> sponsor that will indirectly improve the communications you get from
> developers when you have questions. 
>
> In conclusion, (hm, 5th grade essay time!) Sponsorship offers a number of
> benefits to the sponsor in a more indirect way than scratching an itch.
> By collaborating with other sponsors, tasks which are too large for one
> organization to support directly can be undertaken and core developers are
> more likely to be involved in developments. Sponsoring helps ensure
> the success of the project as a whole -- impotant for organizations
> which depend critically on OpenLayers. Sponsoring has a certain
> marketing appeal, and can help to popularize supporters of the
> OpenLayers project even if they can't contribute developmetn resources
> directly, and sponsorship helps to allow for the determination of future
> direction by providing a direct pipeline to the project steering
> committee for sponsors to offer project direction feedback.
>
> All in all, for many organizations these benefits are probably worth the
> $3k that they get out of it. In fact, many organizations sponsor OSGeo
> with far fewer reasons. OSGeo sponsorship does not get you any direct
> control/benefit from any OSGeo project -- just your name on a web page/
> marketing materials. But there are a number of OSGeo sponsors:
> http://www.osgeo.org/content/sponsorship/sponsors.html who do it
> primarily for the encouragement/maintainance of the OSGeo community.
> Some might well simply describe this as 'altruism', but I think that if
> you were to ask Frank Warmardam, what he would say is that you are
> ensuring the future stability of a community of developers who have
> helped you in the past. Combined with a little bit of altruism, such
> things can go a long way :)
>
>   
>> That said, Chris, I still think it's good idea, and I have probably
>> overlooked something that makes it more attractive. Edumacate me :)
>>     
>
> I don't know if I did so successfully, but i've just laid out the pitch
> I plan to use on people who I want to be sponsors, if the PSC decides to
> go this route: I'd love to hear whether you (or anyone else) thinks the
> above reasons are convincing :)
>
> Regards,
>   


-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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