[postgis-users] GEOS Project Sponsors Wanted

[Paul Ramsey]

Do you want to help the PostGIS project get faster and remove nagging
bugs? Then become a project sponsor for GEOS, the library that PostGIS
uses for topological operations! GEOS project sponsorship will be used
for things like: bringing the latest performance improvements in from
JTS (new Buffer is 20 times faster!, cascaded union is 10 times
faster!), addressing corner cases that still cause topological errors
(see http://trac.osgeo.org/geos/report/1), and ensuring that community
patches get reviewed and added to the code base.

What is project sponsorship? It is this
<http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Project_Sponsorship>

As an OSGeo project, GEOS can use the umbrella organization to collect
and pool resources to hire a maintainer or do other activities
necessary to sustain the project. All spending decisions will be
approved by the GEOS Project Steering Committee
<http://trac.osgeo.org/geos/wiki/PSC>  The kinds of items I listed in
the first paragraph will be the things we will be spending money on.

How do you do it? Express your interest in sponsoring, privately to me
or publicly on this list. When you are ready, OSGeo will issue an
invoice for sponsorship.

Is this a joke? Does anyone do this? No! Yes! Safe Software has
already pledged $5000 towards GEOS project sponsorship. Why? Because
they use GEOS in their product, so they have a stake in ensuring the
continued health and development of the software. If you use PostGIS
in your business, you are using GEOS, and you have a stake in keeping
the software ecosystem healthy.

Is any pledge too small? We are looking for pledges of $1000 and up at
this time. OSGeo has facilities for smaller donations, and I will
research them and bring that information to the list in the near
future.

Thanks!

Paul