[Qgis-psc] How many releases in 2018?

Wed Dec 13 00:42:39 PST 2017

Hi Tim,

Ok - sorry I did not want to say that all SWAG is useless. T-Shirts and 
Stickers make sense. We should add a column with T-Shirt sizes at the 
Madeira Wiki, to make sure we order the right sizes.

But we should not spend excessive amounts on SWAG that ends in some 
trashcan ... I've been to countless conferences where 90% of the SWAG in 
the conference bag ended up immediately  in the trashcan - because it 
was useless to me. Just want to avoid that.

BTW: I translated the activitiy concept and 2018 budget and sent it off 
to the tax authorities. If we are lucky, we could get a decision before 
the end of the year. I mentioned in the letter, that other Open Source 
software is organized similar - a non-profit association or foundation 
alongside with commercial support companies. I mentioned LibreOffice, 
Apache, Firefox, Inkscape, Gnome, KDE as examples.

BTW: we are close to reaching 100k € on the income side for 2017 (the 
bulk being sponsorships, followed by donations (PayPal and 
Wiretransfer)). I am confident that we surpass the 100k for the first 
time this year, thanks to all the positive support from the user 
community and the companies/organizations using or supporting QGIS. On 
the expense side I am still waiting for a lot of invoices for 3.0 bug 
fixing.

Greetings,

Andreas

On 12.12.2017 22:58, Tim Sutton wrote:
> Hi
>
>
>> On 11 Dec 2017, at 10:40, Andreas Neumann <a.neumann at carto.net 
>> <mailto:a.neumann at carto.net>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Thanks all for your feedback.
>>
>> If I raise the expenses somewhere or introduce new expenses, I need 
>> to decrease other expenses. Otherwise it would be an unbalanced 
>> budget, which I would like to avoid. I'd like to be more conservative 
>> - as this helps us to have a healthy financial situation.
>>
>>
>
> Yup I understood that - I was just thinking that the budget did not 
> account for money carried over from 2017 which might leave some scope 
> for additional expenditures.
>
>> I have now changed the proposal to spend less on bug fixing for 
>> version 3.4 and included expenses for packaging (9k - not sure if 
>> this is reasonable ?) It would mean 3k per release - (2k per release 
>> for Jürgen (for Windows and Debian Nightlies) and 1k for Larry for 
>> OSX). Does it make sense?
>>
>
> Yes
>
>
>> @Jürgen: would these 6k for your work in 2018 be a reasonable 
>> compensation for what you do regarding OSGeo4W, etc.? There is now 
>> already 6k more spending than expected income - and I am not willing 
>> to go beyond ;-)
>>
>> I know we have a financial reserve of about 45k € - but I'd like to 
>> keep this reserve in order to be able to react for unforeseen things. 
>> Who knows if our non-profit status is really accepted? It could mean 
>> that suddenly we have to spend several k € on taxes - or we decide 
>> that we need new/faster/better infrastructure. Or suddenly more devs 
>> ask for financial support to attend the dev meeting.
>>
>>
>
> Ok I guess it addresses my point above then.
>
>
>> About raising the bronze level sponsorship: not sure if this wouldn't 
>> be a shot in the foot. We have a lot of very small companies (1-3 
>> employees) as sponsors. 500k is probably what they can afford, but if 
>> we raise it now, we risk loosing them. Besides, companies are free to 
>> choose the amount they want to spend, anyway. We have some sponsors 
>> who pay 800 or 1500 for a bronze sponsorship. So that option already 
>> exists. I would like to keep the sponsorship prices as they are for 
>> now - and rather make sure to ship a good version 3. If the 3x 
>> releases are really good, it would be a compelling argument to 
>> attract new sponsors ... or ask some existing sponsors to raise their 
>> level or amount a bit.
>>
>>
> Ok happy to go with your judgement on this.
>
>> @Anita: the expenses for the QGIS 3 bug fixing will be taken into 
>> account this December. I expect invoices for around 20-30k € 
>> regarding QGIS bug fixing of QGIS master (3.0).
>>
>> About SWAG: yes, we could buy T-Shirts for the Madeira meeting. Who 
>> wants to organize it? Otherwise I am not such a big fan of useless 
>> advertising gadgets ...
>>
>>
>
>
> I can organise it. I don’t think it is good to characterise swag as 
> useless - it helps to increase our profile and helps to promote QGIS - 
> I have had many conversations started from people seeing the stickers 
> on my laptop and then the person ends up getting an explanation of 
> what QGIS is. I also think that those coming to the hackfest will 
> really appreciate the token of a shirt or hat or whatever. That 
> said,if the general consensus is that we should not budget for swag 
> and rather use the money on other things then so be it, though I don’t 
> think that is the case. BTW I will also try to get some more posters 
> made as they Q logo adds a nice touch to group photos….
>
> Regards
>
> Tim
>
>> Greetings,
>> Andreas
>>
>> On 2017-12-11 09:02, Paolo Cavallini wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Il 10/12/2017 20:35, Tim Sutton ha scritto:
>>>> Other suggested budget items:
>>>> Package maintenance - Windows
>>>> Package maintenance - Mac
>>>> Package maintenance - Linux / Debian / Ubuntu
>>>>
>>>> Rationale: I think it would be good to pay something towards all the
>>>> effort it takes Jürgen in particular puts into making the packages, and
>>>> in future also support Larry to maintain 'first class' MacOS packages.
>>>
>>> +1 from me
>>>
>>>> Expected income: Should there not be.a 'balance brought forward' with
>>>> any projected remaining cash from 2017 shown as an income for 2018? If
>>>> we did that there would surely be an extra n thousand available for our
>>>> activities.
>>>
>>> it makes sense to me
>>>
>>>> I 100% agree about the PR management that we could as one of the 
>>>> devs to
>>>> take on as a part time 'job'. I would like to also propose that because
>>>> there is such a long backlog of items in the queue that we have a
>>>> special sprint from that person (e.g. 1 week of funding) to triage the
>>>> existing queue (as a separate activity to reviewing the regularly
>>>> incoming PR's).
>>>
>>> +1
>>>
>>>> Our SWAG budget underspend: Can I suggest we actually do use it - I
>>>> think it is a wasted opportunity to market our project. Perhaps we 
>>>> could
>>>> start by buying a bunch of t-shirts / caps etc and brining them 
>>>> along to
>>>> Madeira and just handing them out to all attendees - a small reward for
>>>> the effort they put into supporting the project? I can probably do it
>>>> from here if nobody else is interested to help with it.
>>>
>>> the more nerdish side of me says we better move this budget to bugfixing
>>> etc., but from a wider perspective I agree with Tim, so a +1
>>>
>>>> Glad to see you added in more cash for the Python API docs....and 
>>>> for docs
>>>> in general.
>>>>
>>>> I also want to suggest that with cash brought forward from 2017 if we
>>>> have additional cash that we take the first steps to hiring a 
>>>> develop on
>>>> a e.g. one day a week basis to do 'work in the interests of the 
>>>> project'
>>>> - thinking for example of the welcome screen / user experience stuff we
>>>> discussed in Nødebo and other high value effort which does not fit
>>>> neatly into a grant and which contractor work would generally not
>>>> attract. It would add EUR41,600 to our budget but I think we could ask
>>>> the developer for a cheaper rate since it is long term guaranteed work.
>>>> I think we could couple this with a funding drive and updating our
>>>> sponsorship prices a bit e.g. move bronze up to EUR 800 or 100EUR.
>>> again, +1
>>>
>>> Thanks Tim for your thoughts, and Andreas for your precious work!
>>
>>
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>
>
>
>
> ---
>
> *Tim Sutton*
> QGIS Project Steering Committee Chair
> tim at qgis.org <mailto:tim at qgis.org>
>
>
>
>

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