[Qgis-user] Recognition of QGIS feature funders

[Vincent Picavet]

Hello Andras, all,

Le jeudi 3 juillet 2014 15:18:19, Andreas Neumann a écrit :
> Hi all,
> 
> I think a mention of the organization who funded a feature in the visual
> changelog is a reasonable request. Not much work and a fair recognition
> and "thank you" visible by many.

I think this can be a good place to mention them, and probaly enough 
recognition to funders, as Nicolas mentionned it. A small logo could also be 
added, as stated for European funds compliance. 
Furthermore, the ephemeral aspect of the visual changelog also encourages 
funders to fund more features if they want to be on the next visual changelog.

Adding some human-readable entries in the visual changelog about less "flashy" 
things may be something interesting too, so as readers realize that the work 
on the software is not always visible. Explaining refactoring is not easy 
e.g., but can be done and is of interest too.

I agree with you Paolo that the other suggestions may be too much, and not 
really practical.

> In the visual changelog you also list the sponsors at the very top - so
> why not also mentioning the funding organization? If there are two or
> three co-funding you can list them all.
> 
> I can see a positive effect by this that other organizations may also
> think about funding a specific feature if they see that other
> organizations do the same.
> 
> I don't think that many users are aware that more than half of QGIS
> features would not exist if organizations or companies would not fund them.

This is something that should really be improved. A lot of QGIS users still 
think the software improves all by itself, written by hippies in their garages 
(just unrealistic, not that I have anything against hippies ;-)

Also, this encourages QGIS deployment as you say. Software deployment and 
migrations work a lot as mimic work. Funding these softwares too, and if an 
organization sees a similar org funding, they will be tempted to do the same. 

This is true that it is really difficult to provide recognition for all people 
helping to improve QGIS, as this is a complex ecosystem and there are a lot of 
different ways to help. We already have a list of contributors in QGIS, so 
recognition is already here mostly, even if we can probably improve it 
somehow, and also make it part of the visual changelog too.
Keeping the process simple is probably possible, with something along these 
lines :
Have a part at the bottom of the Visual ChangeLog, where we can list all 
contributors, and also thank any person who contributed to improve the 
software. This can work with general and simple concepts :
* automatically list anyone having commits on the QGIS git repo
* auto-add anyone having commits on the QGIS git documentation
* auto-add plugin authors from public repo
* add a way in projecta to easily suggest someone to thank, and add them

The last, declarative part, would allow for flexibility. We do not need and 
should'nt enter a "measure my investment in the project" championship, I think 
a mention is sufficient. I am confident that we can trust the community to be 
reasonable on who gets proposed to be in, without having to rely on a complex 
peer-reviewed assessment. 

As for the visual ChangeLog, it would need a patch to projecta, and I made an 
issue on this point, feel free to improve and suggest more :
https://github.com/timlinux/projecta/issues/102

As for the sponsor part, this is IMHO a very different subject. Sponsors are 
necessary to cover various expenses and mainly codesprints, help developers 
attend conferences, and maybe having some bugfix sessions too.
I think the way it works now is pretty good and the investment/recognition 
ratio is reasonable.

Hope this helps,

Vincent




> I am with Nicolas and Oslandia on this request and I think that the
> visual changelog is a good place to thank the funders.
> 
> Andreas
> 
> Am 03.07.2014 12:29, schrieb n.rochard at aduga.org:
> > Sear Paolo
> > 
> > I think, social network is a good way, politician are using it a lot.
> > The oher way should put the name and logo of the agency/business wich
> > fund entirely a new feature on the graphic changelog
> > (http://changelog.linfiniti.com/qgis/version/2.4.0/)
> > 
> > Thanks for your quick reply
> > 
> > Nicolas
> 
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