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

[Tim Sutton]

Hi

> On 23 Nov 2018, at 19:51, Vincent Picavet (ml) <vincent.ml at oslandia.com> wrote:
> 
> 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.


I’m on the same page as Vincent here: switching to memberships is good, but it should not come with any specific ’sweetners’ other than the ability for the organisation to say that they are a funding member of QGIS.org.

Regards

Tim

> 
> 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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> 
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---

Tim Sutton
tim at qgis.org




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