[Qgis-psc] Discussion around changing sponsors to members in QGIS.ORG

[Vincent Picavet (ml)]

Hello Andreas,

The reasons you push forward seem to be good reasons to transform
sponsorship into membership.

However, it seems really important to me that QGIS.ORG stays totally
independent.
And giving money to the organization should not have any impact on any
decision taken by QGIS.org.
Giving back visibility to the members is good, giving voting rights is a
really big NO from me, and I would be against even small advantages like
choosing a bug to fix.
Note that in France, for membership and sponsoring of associations,
there are clear limitations of what you are allowed to do in terms of
counterparts. Non-complying associations are considered as service
providers and fall into different status and fiscal conditions. I don't
know for Switzerland, but it may be worth a look.

Having non-voting members is common in associations and I do not see it
as a problem.

That would be a +1 for me, under conditions.

Best regards, have a nice weekend,
Vincent



On 21/11/2018 22:02, Andreas Neumann wrote:
> Dear PSC (and active contributors),
> 
> I would like to discuss if we could change our statutes again (sorry
> about that - and of course only if you agree - we can vote on it).
> 
> The idea is to change our current sponsorships we have to a membership
> in the future. As it is now it would be purely voluntary - and they
> wouldn't have voting rights. We could call them "sustaining members" or
> "supporting members" and we could still keep different membership
> categories. Instead of calling them gold/silver/bronze, we would could
> them something like small (the current bronze), normal (the current
> silver), large (the current gold) - or something similar (perhaps you
> have better ideas about the naming) - just to make sure it is not a
> sponsorship anymore - and gold/silver/bronze is quite attached to
> sponsorships.
> 
> Why would I suggest such a change?
> 
> * There is a good chance that our sponsorship payments will reach a
> limit (150k CHF = approx. 130k €), if we would surpass that limit, then
> we would have to charge VAT on the sponsorship payments
> 
> * on the other hand membership fees of an association are not subject to
> VAT
> 
> * a membership could be easier for public authorities to pay, instead of
> a sponsorship
> 
> * Maybe organizations are more likely to renew a membership fee than a
> sponsorship (maybe more commitment) - but not sure about that.
> 
> * we would still have a public listing of sustaining members (with their
> logos, website and location), but we wouldn't call them sponsors anymore
> 
> * Members are welcome to add a donation on top of the membership fee.
> This would be similar to now. Some bronze sponsors maybe voluntarily pay
> 1500 instead of 500, but are still listed as bronze, until they would
> surpass the threshold of the next level.
> 
> We can discuss or think about if we can give such sustaining/supporting
> members some additional benefits (which would help attract more of them)
> - e.g. a small member could name 2 bugs that get prioritized during bug
> fixing time, for normal it would be 5 and for large some maybe 10. Or
> maybe you would have some other ideas about benefits for such members
> instead. I think they shouldn't have voting rights - that should stay
> with the current voting members (the active contributors, user groups
> and developers).
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> Andreas
> 
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