[Qgis-psc] QGIS for Mac OS packaging and infrastructure

[Richard Duivenvoorde]

[sorry resending to list, as I used the wrong email, my msg was bounced,
and only received by Saber]

On 27/03/2019 00.45, Nyall Dawson wrote:
> The trick is balancing being a professional, finance driven project
> whilst still encouraging donations of code and new community members.
> If we discourage commercial investment and the sponsored work of
> Lutra, North Road, OpenGIS, Oslandia, 3liz, camptocamp, Sourcepole,
> iMhere Asia, etc then we won't have anywhere near the activity we see
> today. For many of us it's no longer a "partly to get a living"
> matter, it's a "my livelihood DEPENDS on being paid for the work I do"
> matter. We've taken the risk to drop stable work as employees for
> commercial firms and instead dedicate our time to making QGIS better.
> 
> So let's be cautious in these discussions. Please don't disparage or
> put down commercially backed work. Embrace the changing nature of the
> project and the benefits it's given to all, and help to guide the
> project to ensure that both commercial backed work AND community can
> co-exist together.

Ok, I'll try to be more cautious, I'm not putting down commercial work!

I've no problem with commercial interest, I do have myself too partly. I
hoped that pointing to the Crowdfunding efforts that I'm ok if companies
keep up their own pants. But I do have problems if certain commercial
interests eat 20% of community interest. Then there is an imbalance.
If I look at both the dev and the user 'market', giving/asking 20% of a
yearly budget to a maybe 5 percent market share is not proportional.
Before starting to point to the other OS with a small user market share:
at least they offer (looking at the dev meetings or commumity
discussions on the list) a large part of dev's AND community discussions.

We have to manage this balance carefully, I do not have a good plan for
it. But looking at other projects: Postgres? Debian? Apache? Kernel?
should help. But it is HARD: I've seen OSM point to us after Anita's talk.

@saber: who paid for the effort till oct 2019? Apparently if was more
expensive then they thought? Can they be asked to sponsor the rest?

As a personal note about passing this point 3 years ago: I'm aware of
that and it affects my 'fun' in the project. It's hard to give back to a
project for free if others try to get a living from the same.
So I hereby give up my PSC position to somebody who can handle this
tension better.

Regards,

R