[postgis-users] [postgis-devel] Vote On Project Sponsorship

[Paragon Corporation]

 Chris,

I'm cc'ing regular users on this since it was several of them who had asked
for this and that is the main reason
I am pushing it.

1) I'm a bit pessimistic we would garner enough funds to fund a particular
feature.  
So lets just not go there.  It's talking about stuff that may never happen
And those things may best be dealt with between two individuals if we can't
come to an agreement.

2) I was thinking the money could be spent to support plane tickets and fees
to 
say go to FOSS4G etc that many of our developers wouldn't be able to afford
on their own.

3) I was thinking Refractions should be reimbursed in some way for providing
hosting, build bot etc.
And if we did have extra -- perhaps we can have build bots for other
platforms
So that these major changes we make aren't quite so painful (we catch them
much earlier on).

I do not see this as a free money, but more as a simple answer to people
when they ask
"If I want to fund the project, who do I give money too?"

This is an extremely frustrating question to not be able to answer and I
don't think any of us would
Feel comfortable saying "Give it to me directly"

Thanks,
Regina

> -----Original Message-----
> From: postgis-devel-bounces at postgis.refractions.net 
> [mailto:postgis-devel-bounces at postgis.refractions.net] On 
> Behalf Of Chris Hodgson
> Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 2:51 PM
> To: PostGIS Development Discussion
> Subject: Re: [postgis-devel] Vote On Project Sponsorship
> 
> The actual money is handled by OSGeo for us, which is great. 
> But we do need to have well documented votes on where and how 
> to allocate the money. This is the part that seems a bit 
> worrisome to me, as well - being that some of the most likely 
> ways to spend the money would be to fund some of ourselves to 
> do work that we might have otherwise done for "free". 
> Additionally, it seems like there is some possibility for 
> contention on how the funds should be spent, I think we might 
> need some policy written up about how we come up with ways to 
> spend the money and how we decide who does the work. We would 
> end up needing to deal with contract management as well - 
> what rates do we set? How do we make sure that the work will 
> get done to the standard we are looking for? How do we keep 
> track of where the "free" works ends and the "payed" work 
> stops, and vice versa. We can't even assign a single contract 
> manager from among us, as any one of us might be on the other 
> end of the contract.
> 
> While on one hand it seems silly to complain about having to 
> manage what is essentially "free money", but on the other 
> hand I also know the resentment that can build in a community 
> (or family even) from doing business between members.
> 
> Here's the sort of decisions I worry about:
> 
> - what to spend money on
> - who should do it
> - how much it is worth
> - what about the work that other people will end up doing to 
> support  it (building a new release, testing bugs around the 
> issue, documenting)
> - who will scrutinize the work and what authority do they 
> have (how big does a bug have to be in order for us to hold 
> back payment)
> - how will people feel when they do a bunch of work for free, 
> and then a donation comes in and somebody else gets paid to 
> do something they view as less important or not done to as 
> high a standard
> 
> While "free money" sounds great, I think there are some risks 
> to our community, and also some additional costs to be borne 
> by the PSC. I'd like to give others the chance to assuage my 
> fears but for now my vote is +0.
> 
> Chris
> 
> Mark Cave-Ayland wrote:
> > On 01/09/11 23:16, Paragon Corporation wrote:
> >
> >> I think we are coming close to having completed our work 
> to become a 
> >> full fledged OSGeo project and I would like to request the OSGeo 
> >> board to add us to the project sponsorship board.
> >> Can we have a vote on this.
> >> +1
> >> Thanks,
> >> Regina
> >
> > I understand that this means we can get external 
> sponsorship (which is 
> > a good thing) but how do we manage the transfer of funds to 
> > developers? Do we need to have a treasurer of some description?
> >
> >
> > ATB,
> >
> > Mark.
> >
> 
> _______________________________________________
> postgis-devel mailing list
> postgis-devel at postgis.refractions.net
> http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-devel
>