[Qgis-psc] Financial contribution for bug-fixing

[Paolo Cavallini]

Hi Andreas,

Il 07/04/2015 13:19, Andreas Neumann ha scritto:

> The Swiss QGIS user group wants to contribute financially to bug fixing
> and QA. We decided to raise our annual membership fees to fulfil this goal.
> 
> We want to make sure this money goes into bug fixing and quality
> assurance. For 2015 we will support the effort with CHF 10'000 (Euro
> 9'500).
> 
> How do we handle this? General sponsoring cannot be dedicated to a
> certain goal in the project - as far as I know.
> 
> We also want to make sure that in the future not only blocking bugs can
> be solved, but also those labelled as high priority.

much welcome news. Thanks for this. The limitation about targeted
funding was decided a while ago, when QGIS project was more immature
than now, and IMHO it could be lifted, especially for people who is
already part of the project. It would be more difficult if, say, an
unknown company would come and ask for some functions; in that case, I'd
still be in favour of redirecting them to individual core developers.
I think this could be turned as follows:
* the project identifies key areas where we need financial support, on
the basis of a general budget[0]
* then donors could express their preference (I'd suggest to allow this
only for larger donations, say 5 to 10 k€) about what
* the final decision on how to exactly invest the budget will remain in
the hands of the PSC
* those who want to target their funds more precisely can always hire a
developer.
How does this sound?

[0]As for the yearly budget, I'd suggest to consider the following expenses.

* Release management & packaging
* Stabilisation and bug fixing
  * pre-release (three times yearly)
  * automatic test maintenance and management
  * regular bug fixing
* Testing and Bug Triaging
* API Documentation
* User Documentation & Training materials
* Testing and hosting infrastructure
* Translation management
* Community management
* Infrastructure management
* Plugins management
* Accounting, banking, and account fees
* Promotional materials
* Twice yearly developer meetings
* Legal fees

Based on Tim doc:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VKXn2GYC9DsmeMJ34w1v3Ui1n0bQ7dKDjkSVUo6omCk/edit#heading=h.vsn0jtq85cwo

All the best.
-- 
Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
QGIS & PostGIS courses: http://www.faunalia.eu/training.html