[QGIS-Developer] [Qgis-psc] QGIS budget 2023 RFC

Tue Dec 6 07:57:54 PST 2022

Dear all, thanks a lot for all the feedback,

As you might remember, the aim of the thread was indeed to discuss the
proposed budget, so I'll to try to address most of the mentioned points in
all emails without a specific order, trying to convey how things came to
this proposal and why the PSC believes it is the best way forward for
QGIS.org.

As a first reminder, all the discussions happened in public, and you can
read the minutes at https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/wiki#psc-meetings.

The proposal came out of a need to solve a pressing issue we've been
dragging along for some time now and "escalated" when Harrisou sent once
again an appeal for help, and nobody from the developer ml responded [1]:

I'll quote it as a reminder of the stark message showing how alone he felt
in his efforts:

>It's reassuring to discover that there are other channels; at

>least I can say to myself that the total silence to my call is not due to

>some disinterest.     - Harrisou

Even to this, the only answers were from Tim suggesting to Harrisou to join
the next PSC to find solutions. The result of the PSC discussions was the
proposal to add a full-time paid documentation person to effectively help
Harrisou do what he has been trying to do for years alone. He is doing a
tremendous job in a part of the project where it is challenging to get
resources committed to it, and even when there were funds available, funded
documentation efforts thus far have barely scratched the surface of the
work that needs to be done. Even to the appeal above, the only answers were
from Tim suggesting to Harrisou to join the next PSC to find solutions.

Harrisou and Tim (Harrissou looking after docs, Tim looking after various
web servers & sites) stand, as volunteers, to amplify their efforts through
the paid helpers rather than have their efforts replaced by paid people.

Regarding the QGIS infrastructure, the fact is that despite trying to
onboard other people as volunteers, nobody is that interested in working on
these things. Tim mentioned personally having walked various people through
'onboarding' as a sysadmin, and nothing came of it. Richard and Jürgen (who
also help manage the infrastructure) may have different feelings, but Tim
feels he is (allow me a direct quote here with his permission) "getting
older and dumber," and we should have a plan in place to make sure the
infrastructure that keeps the project running is professionally managed
even when he will be too busy running his ever-growing farm :)

Jürgen also mentioned the same issue regarding the infrastructure behind
windows packaging in the past.

Regarding transparency of the decision proposed, I'd like to separate the
issue into three parts; 1) transparency regarding using Kartoza as a proxy,
2) transparency in hiring and finally and 3) transparency in the process of
deciding to try hiring ‘outside’ people to support our project.

Starting with the last point, I'd like to remind you all that we are indeed
discussing if we want to accept this proposal right here in this thread,
and finally, it will go to the voting members for decision-making. I really
need help seeing how the PSC is not being transparent here. I'm saddened to
see a perception of us trying to hide things when all is openly
discussed/logged in reality.

Regarding using Kartoza as a proxy company, it was indeed not selected
based on being an open call - much like we appoint trusted developers to do
bug fixing or other key efforts for the project. We are thankful to Kartoza
for taking over the burden of doing it. Quoting Tim again: "It is only a
hassle for us, and I only offered to do it through Kartoza to ‘make it
happen’ rather than some desire to do it through Kartoza".  Obviously, if
the community wishes to use another company/individuals here, it is
absolutely no problem to open the proxy up to another company. If anyone is
interested, please contact the PSC mailing list with a concrete proposal on
how to go forward.

Finally, on the transparency in hiring: this doesn't make any sense to me.
Hiring is a private process. People send their private CVs, often in
secret, from their current employers, to whom they are being "disloyal".
People applying should not have visibility of their competitors for the
job. In the case of Kartoza, they have a POPIA [2] (something like GDPR),
which governs what personal information they can share.

Tim has shared all of the documentation writer's CVs with Harrissou, and he
can pick whoever he thinks is best for the job. Tim also gave some
recommendations based on basic screening of GIS skills, technical writing
skills, whether they submitted a writing sample etc. For the infrastructure
developer position, they sent all the applicants a standard assignment as
they do as part of their normal recruitment process and had their
developers review and shortlist. I don't know how we could sensibly
(stressing that part since QGIS.org is not Google and the like...) do
anything differently. Here also, we are more than happy if others have
better know-how to come up with constructive proposals on handling things
if the budget items are approved.

Please note that Kartoza would absorb the candidates they found or
discontinue the hiring process if the budget was not approved.

Another raised issue was that paid support people would demotivate
volunteers: When we started with the paid bug fixing programme and other
funded development, there was the same fear expressed; I think the success
of those programs and the incredible amount of volunteer-driven
contributions we are getting speak for themselves. We need to catch up on
non-coders, as Jeff McKenna said (although out of a misread); we have been
a bit stuck in the 2000s, where developers are the superstars. Currently,
developers creating new shiny features are often getting much more
[visibility|kudos|salary|...] in return, even though people "behind the
scenes" writing documentation, translating stuff, triaging bugs, reviewing
PRs, managing servers, keeping CI happy, ... are the actual superstars and
should be treated as such.

It is indicative to me that we, unfortunately, are still partly back in
2000 when I read comments like: "one of my takes is that seeing the grant
budget disappear this year is a pity, especially seeing other amounts
dedicated to documentation, for example.".  The grant programme is indeed a
fantastic program, and it is a shame to see it downsized, but our
documentation and web infrastructure are also important. The work that
happens in these areas is less visible and garners less attention. And yes,
for once, we propose to downscale coding in favour of documentation. Hurra
to that!

Regarding the note on social dumping, I do not agree at all with that. We
are offering a highly competitive salary in the market where the applicants
live; this is a widely respected practice done by projects like Google
Summer of code as well. A nice side effect is that we are starting to use
funds in economies other than the usual "Rich" countries where probably
90-95% of our funds usually go.

As for the budget always needing to be bigger, we run a world-leading
software project for millions of people on a budget [apparently] equivalent
to the price of 50 licenses of our main competitor. We (the whole QGIS
community, not the PSC) are doing a pretty darn good job, thanks to the
countless hours of passionate work put into it by volunteers and companies
alike. We are far from perfect, we have a "get things done while respecting
others" attitude, and we have to make compromises for efficiency. I'd never
want to see any one of the members of our community having to stop working
on the project due to feeling burnout from it.

I hope I could address and answer most questions, and I encourage you to
look at the open-source landscape around us and see how successful projects
like KDE and Blender are doing the same thing as we propose doing here.

So for those responding to this thread in a quick fly-by reply, I appeal to
you to put some thought into why you object to this, who your objection
affects, what advantage objecting brings to the project versus what benefit
agreeing brings to the project, who's time and enthusiasm you value and
whose you don't."

As mentioned above, please join the PSC call starting soon if you wish to
discuss this more.

Cheers Marco

[1]
https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-developer/2022-November/065211.html

[2] https://popia.co.za/

--

Marco Bernasocchi

QGIS.org Chair

OPENGIS.ch CEO

http://berna.io

[1]
https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-developer/2022-November/065211.html
[2] https://popia.co.za/

On Mon, 5 Dec 2022 at 18:18, Enrico Ferreguti <enricofer at gmail.com> wrote:

> > As for A, one of my take is that seeing the grant budget disappear this
> year is a pity, especially seeing other amounts dedicated to documentation
> for example.
>
> I agree with Vincent and Matteo and even if I understand the need of fund
> bugfixing and qt6 migration I would strongly recommend to improve grants
> budget as a consistent way to interact with community, furthermore I would
> enlarge core developers audience in any way with targeted training and
> social involvement and lowering the needed technical contribution skills. I
> thank you all for sharing this interesting discussion.
>
> Il giorno lun 5 dic 2022 alle ore 11:27 Vincent Picavet (ml) via
> QGIS-Developer <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org> ha scritto:
>
>> Hi Andreas, all,
>>
>> On 24/11/2022 16:09, Andreas Neumann wrote:
>> [..]
>> > We did not really discuss the hourly rates at the budget meeting.
>> > From 2021 to 2022 we raised the hourly dev rates from 100 to 110 -
>> > and the hourly documentation rates from 40 to 44. I know that both
>> > rates are low. We can discuss raising them again.
>>
>> My question was general, and actually includes all prices. I have no
>> definite opinion on this topic, as it can be complicated given the
>> disparity of inflation according to what price we are talking about, and
>> also geographically speaking.
>>
>> > The plan for the two positions was not to have direct employees of
>> > QGIS.ORG <http://QGIS.ORG>, but to use a proxy company, in our case
>> > Kartoza, to act as the employer. Also - our budget does not allow
>> > regular European or North-American salaries. With these limitations
>> > at hand, we can use Kartoza as a proxy to hire employees in certain
>> > parts of the world where the salaries we can offer can be attractive
>> > - and where they have talented people to work on some of our issues
>> > (sysadmin, documentation, etc.)
>>
>> I have very mixed feelings about this, and it raises lots of questions we
>> definitely have to clear out before establishing any process.
>>
>> - Using a proxy company is very similar to me than having direct
>> employees, if these positions have no clear limits of time and perimeter
>> - Using a proxy company instead of direct employees can be considered
>> illegal according to local legislation. I do not know for Swiss law.
>> - How was Kartoza selected ? Was there an open process for other
>> companies to apply ? Who decided and on what criteria ? The fact that the
>> company owned by a member of QGIS PSC is selected is a big red flag for me,
>> if the process is not fully transparent and fair for others.
>> - "our budget does not allow European or North-American salaries" : see
>> below for the budget volume comments. But I have very mixed feelings about
>> this statement : it sounds exactly like social dumping. I do not know what
>> would be fair to select employees, and I recognize it to be a complex
>> issue, but in some ways it does not feel right.
>>
>> > For the documentation part: Tim and Harrissou are involved in the
>> > selection process of the candidates.
>>
>> Is the process and selection committee documented somewhere ?
>>
>> > I agree that the grant budget with 10k is not very attractive. We
>> > also discussed skipping it for one year. Not sure what is better ...
>> >
>> > BTW: you can all help to find new sustaining members ... that would
>> > increase our budget and would allow us to pay better hourly rates
>> > ...
>> >
>> > I wish we had a larger budget at hand than the +/- 200k € we seem to
>> > be able to attract each year. From certain countries where we know we
>> > have a lot of QGIS users (France, Italy - just to name two of them)
>> > there are not a lot of sustaining members or donations other than
>> > from a few private persons and very small companies. Maybe companies
>> > like yours could help us to get in touch with the larger companies
>> > with a lot of QGIS users that could become new sustaining members ...
>> > Do you think that would be possible?
>>
>> First of all, complaining that our budget is too low is definitely not
>> the way to consider the problem : QGIS.org budget will, by definition,
>> **always** be too low compared to what we could need. Developing a software
>> and managing a community is a boundless task and you can always find tasks
>> and work packages to spend all the money you can imagine of.
>>
>> I agree that QGIS.org could attract more sustaining members. I just hope
>> you are not accusing Oslandia of not doing our job of proselitysm, QGIS
>> community support, communication and globally QGIS.org and QGIS software
>> contributions. We do our part for sure.
>>
>> ... And this is not the point, as I said the question I raise is not how
>> to increase our budget, since the exact same issues will araise with a
>> larger budget.
>>
>> The questions are :
>> - A/ how do we use our existing budget for most important things to
>> support
>> - B/ what our decisions processes are, where are they documented, and are
>> they clear, transparent and fair
>>
>> As for A, one of my take is that seeing the grant budget disappear this
>> year is a pity, especially seeing other amounts dedicated to documentation
>> for example.
>>
>> As for B, I consider that there is a lot of progress to do to make recent
>> decisions and actions clean and trustworthy.
>>
>> Should we want to attract new sustaining members giving money to
>> QGIS.org, we must have an exemplary behaviour in how we decide how to use
>> this money.
>>
>> Vincent
>>
>>
>> >
>> > Andreas
>> >
>> > On Thu, 24 Nov 2022 at 15:05, Vincent Picavet (ml) via QGIS-Developer
>> > <qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org
>> > <mailto:qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org>> wrote:
>> >
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > Thanks for sharing the budget with the community.
>> >
>> > A few questions / remarks : - in most countries, we can see a general
>> > inflation, having consequences on every kind of costs ( hosting,
>> > salaries…). Did you take this context into account when preparing the
>> > budget, especially when basing planned 2023 costs on actual 2022
>> > costs ? - the cut on Grant budget is really hard. With a "reasonable"
>> > mean budget of 5K per grant, this would mean 2 grants only this year.
>> > It sounds more or less like the end of the grant program. Who would
>> > candidate if chances to be selected are really low ? Wouldn't there
>> > be a way to mitigate it a bit, through various smaller budget
>> > reductions to other budget lines ? The increase in documentation
>> > contribution is huge compared to the grant decrease. I fear that we
>> > loose grants as a mean to attract new core developers.
>> >
>> > My most important remark is about "allow for a regular small salary
>> > .. for one person on each item". Disclaimer : I am quite strongly
>> > against QGIS.org having employees. If we are in the process of having
>> > "regular workers" for qgis.org <http://qgis.org>, then we really have
>> > to work hard on : - having a clear, written and transparent process
>> > for how to select these people - .. process including a fair way for
>> > anyone to candidate I may have missed some communications, but I have
>> > not seen this in place up to now. This is definitely something we
>> > have to put in place before having some internal troubles.
>> >
>> > Best regards, Vincent
>> >
>> > On 24/11/2022 12:07, Marco Bernasocchi wrote:
>> >> Hi all, we prepared the QGIS budget for 2023 and would like to
>> >> have feedback before submitting it to the voting members for
>> >> approval. You can directly leave comments in the file [1].
>> >>
>> >> Please let us have any Feedback until December 4th. On december
>> >> 7th we'll send the budget for vote.
>> >>
>> >> Cheers Marco
>> >>
>> >> [1]
>> >>
>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WyoZCKOehNhU5YB4pFPOuiJbie1mUmMPiq8YW7qyez0/edit?usp=sharing
>> >> <
>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WyoZCKOehNhU5YB4pFPOuiJbie1mUmMPiq8YW7qyez0/edit?usp=sharing
>> >
>> >
>> >>
>> > <
>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WyoZCKOehNhU5YB4pFPOuiJbie1mUmMPiq8YW7qyez0/edit?usp=sharing
>> > <
>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WyoZCKOehNhU5YB4pFPOuiJbie1mUmMPiq8YW7qyez0/edit?usp=sharing
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >> -- Marco Bernasocchi
>> >>
>> >> QGIS.org Chair OPENGIS.ch CEO http://berna.io <http://berna.io>
>> >> <http://berna.io <http://berna.io>>
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________ Qgis-psc mailing
>> >> list Qgis-psc at lists.osgeo.org <mailto:Qgis-psc at lists.osgeo.org>
>> >> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-psc
>> >> <https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-psc>
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________ QGIS-Developer
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>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> >
>> > -- Andreas Neumann QGIS.ORG <http://QGIS.ORG> board member
>> > (treasurer)
>>
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>

-- 
Marco Bernasocchi

QGIS.org Chair
OPENGIS.ch CEO
http://berna.io
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