[OpenLayers-Dev] Entering OSGeo Project Sponsorship

Wed Oct 15 09:09:03 EDT 2008

Chris, tell me if I'm wrong but one of the usage of funds for the
project could be for example organizing code sprint (week hackathons)
with most of the core developpers and start working on the 3.0
version.
That said, I fully understand the advantages of this idea. I think I'm
in favour of that.

Thanks,
Pierre

On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 9:42 AM, Cameron Shorter
<cameron.shorter at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>
> Think Globally, Fix Locally
> Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source
> http://www.lisasoft.com
>
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